Let Us Prey
by ibizababy
Summary: Season 3 retold. Her mother's ancient greed has been her burden for two centuries; she's going to have to stop it if she wants to preserve balance—and not just in New Orleans. Jezebel Zhukov plans to confront the sinister heritage that has cursed her and expose their motives. Risking the inflammation of old memories, Niklaus is eager to help his ex-beloved finish the job.
1. Persona Non Grata

TRISTAN

Marcellus' suspicion rings through the cell phone that afternoon. "So this is your version of asking me something nicely? It's an invitation."

He's right on top of it.

"I believe Aya told you a bit about The Strix, Marcellus... Who we are, what we're capable of. Every few years, we gather to celebrate our status as the most elite creatures in the world, and in the rare instance we feel we've identified someone worthy of our attention, we choose to reach out," I explain to him.

"You think I'm interested?" he laughs at me.

My grin widens as I look out the window of the car. "You haven't hung up. I understand you fostered quite a community here in New Orleans. We can offer you something more global... Resources, access, power. You're a born leader, Marcel. Why stop at just one city?"

"Maybe I'm happy with what I've got," Marcel wants to convince himself.

"I doubt that, but if I've failed to coax you, just disregard this call. Though if you feel you'd be worthy of joining our ranks, don't be late to the party tonight." I hang up.

I feel triumphant having wavered Marcel's path in this sire line war. As the son of that most dreadful family, his allegiance will welcome the time for the Mikaelsons to learn not everyone loves them as much as they believe. My head is pounding. I need blood.

The chauffeur helps me from my car while a few awaiting members of my Strix take the bags from my car. Delaney manhandles the briefcase I've marked fragile. I rip it from his hand, holding it accordingly whilst I gaze at him tediously.

"Can you read?" I snap before walking inside.

As I gaze around the villa that will harbor my visitation, Aya approaches me with a thin smile on her face.

"Have you got her?" She wonders.

I hold the briefcase at eye level, and Mohinder carefully opens the large padlocks. I gesture one of our trusted witches over to remove the imprisonment spell I ordered to be put on this hazardous weapon. Aya gently opens the top of the luggage, frowning at the contents before me.

"Lovely, isn't it?" I purr.

I grab her wrist before she can touch the fine antique inside.

"A plastic vinyl? You said you were bringing the weapon," doubtfully, she reminds me.

"Willingly or forcefully. You're looking upon her," I smirk.

The vinyl record has been written on, scratched, discolored, but the tune remains untouched.

"This vinyl holds the darkest witch known to man. Lethal, demonizing. She is the rogue piece of this sireline war; she must be kept under our watchful eye at all times," I announce.

Several vampires maneuver around us, preparing for my stay.

"You have the power to say such things when you know someone as such," Aya hints.

I nod softly. The memory is unpleasant and a horrific picture, but I haven't the time to draw regret from it.

"Once, perhaps. And unhappily," I murmur.

I shut the briefcase forcefully, handing it over to Mohinder.

"Guard it with your life. And should you have any inducing hallucinations or cravings–don't worry. She does that," I instruct.

MARCEL

I don't think the invitation has left my hand all day. I'm still staring down at it. It depicts a regal and wise night owl, but really, it's just a condescending way to put ornamentation on the Strix's name. Am I going? I'm against it, but if Elijah's gonna keep looking down on me like he does, I will accept just to find out what my options are.

Somewhere in my mind, I almost think things could be alright tonight. The suit I was gifted fit fine in an almost creepy way. Klaus has been preoccupied with an old friend at the Compound and Elijah will be showing up tonight at the ball. He'll just love seeing me here.

When I arrive at midnight on the dot, I find myself being watched by five extensive units of security at the front gates of the rented villa. Aya comes to my rescue and lets me inside.

"Forgive the high precaution. We're a private people," Aya notifies me.

That is quite the lackluster excuse to have fifteen tuxes loitering outside a double door entrance. Privacy could be mistaken for a disturbed hybrid who was uninvited. Aya gestures to a burly guy beside her.

She introduces us, "Marcel, I'd like you to meet my mentor Mohinder. He taught me everything I know about combat."

"Oh, if that's the case, then I am impressed," I say.

After all, she took me down with a tiny scratch on the neck. It's one of my new favorite party tricks.

She keeps talking, "As part of his discipline, he drinks only the blood of vampires he's vanquished in combat. He can go weeks without feeding, yet suffer no effects of hunger, such is his control over body and mind."

I really can only nod to that, looking around and ready to make the small talk compliment of the party's complexity. My eyes land on Elijah, who is watching me from across the room. A clinking noise interrupts our staring contest. Tristan wants to say something, taking a glamorous step into the center of the venue.

"Distinguished friends, welcome. It's so rare that we're able to come together like this to revel for one night in the company of true equals. Now I'd like to take a moment to welcome a very special guest, Mr. Marcel Gerard," Tristan declares.

His hand slowly straightens out to guide their gazes to me. There's clapping and my gratitude is silent.

He waits for it to stop before he says anything more. "Of course, before we tell Marcel all of our secrets, there's one small piece of business to which we must first attend. We must determine his worth."

I draw my head back hearing this. Determine my worth? What in the hell does that mean?

"That's funny. I seem to recall you being the one knocking on my door," I claim.

"You'll notice, Mr. Gerard, that over the course of the evening someone has managed to take something quite dear to you... Your daylight ring," Tristan smiles back at me.

I look down and he's right. The ring is no longer on my right middle finger.

He talks down to me likes I don't already understand what is about to happen. "You need to deduce the identity of the thief. Then you are simply to take back what is yours... Although, I doubt the prize will be easily relinquished. After all, despite our refinement, we're still a rather violent bunch. In victory, you become one of us. In failure, you meet your death. You have a few hours until dawn. I wish you the best of luck."

I needed something strong to impair my stress. I should have expected this. There is no such thing as a vampire, or a group of them for that matter, that doesn't play games. It wasn't a test of my worth–it was a test of my honesty. I know they're suspicious of me.

"I could have warned you," someone says from beside me at the bar.

It's Elijah, drinking his favorite scotch and expecting me to speak my apologies.

I lick my lips, calmly answering him, "Look. I didn't tell you I was coming tonight because..."

He finishes for me. "I wouldn't have allowed it."

He makes it so hard to feel like a mutual adult sometimes.

"There's that word... 'Allowed.' You know, I thought I'd earned the right to be considered an equal, but that's not the way it works in your family, so it's time I consider my options. If nothing else, The Strix aren't interested in me as a sidekick," I point out to him.

"These options, as you describe them, are a death sentence. I suppose I shall have to intervene. It is a shame. I expect it shall ruin my tuxedo. I have had this suit for over a hundred years. It's proven far more reliable than you, Marcellus," he replies.

I shake my head. "Relax, all right? I got this under control."

"Do you?" he imitates a parental tone.

I don't have to answer that.

The Villa of the party has a nice garden. It's only two in the morning. The sky is still holding onto the last crumbs of sunlight. It reminds me of the pictures in a book I stole from my master when I was young. The Alphabet of Ben Sira. I was learning how to read, and if it weren't for that picture of the Garden of Eden, I'd have lost interest.

I hear the quiet pat of footsteps behind me next.

I almost jump when I turn around. I'm facing a beautiful young woman whose extravagantly tan face is bathed in the dewy cobalt skylight, her eyes dark and menacing.

"Tristan send you out here to give me a clue?" I scoff.

She holds something out in her small palm; her hands are covered in henna and her nails look so sharp they might be talons. She has my sunlight ring.

I reach for it, but it transforms into a small black reptile that rings around her wrist and all the way up her arm.

"Who are you?" I ask.

She vanishes when I attempt to look back into her face. I find her in the doorway across from me, eerily watching me before dragging her fingertips around the curve of the archway. I hear the scratching sounds they make on the clay walls. She wants me to follow her. I try to meet her in the hallway before she gets too far, but what I see instead is much more unexpected. The villa has become empty. If it really is as desolate as I'm seeing it, where are the whispers coming from?

"Elijah?" Mistrustful, I call out.

Pure silence abruptly meets my ears. I can't even hear a trumpet in the distance. I place my naked hand on the wall beside me to help me maneuver through the dark space in the hallway. My loafers meet a big puddle. I think someone may have spilled their wine at first, but the farther I walk, the deeper this puddle gets. It smells of old tree sap. I'm walking through a flooded house; magic is at work here. I step back quickly when something long and fast swims past my shins. It hisses at my quick actions. Intimidated, I glance down the hallway. The woman, in her squalid underdress, is walking up the staircase.

"That's enough!" I shout to her. "You can tell Tristan he's taking it too far!"

If Tristan even is responsible for this. I trudge through the dark water carefully, and the closer I get to the dry grand stairway, the louder another hiss begins to get. It multiplies. I rip my hand off the railing when I notice that it has become home to a knot of snakes. I hurry up the stairway, catching a glimpse of a little white foot just exiting the last step at the top.

"Hey!" I call again.

All the doors upstairs are closed except for one. It is alive with cool natural light and opened all the way to the wall beside it. I approach one step per second. I don't see a single body in the room. All there is to be found is an outdated phonograph holding my daylight ring around its spindle. I shake off my wet shoes, until I find that they're not wet at all.

The illusion has ended, but my ring still waits to take a seat around my finger. I take it with careful consideration, looking around carefully.

 _Shnk._ The small padlock on the briefcase beside my hand falls open. Fragile, the briefcase reads. I remove the lock and open the confidential storage, first looking over my shoulder for an audience, and then at the ridiculous find sitting on green velvet. Just some bizarrely marked up vinyl.

I scoff, handling it casually and turning it over in my hands. "Do not play. Devil inside", "She doesn't love you", " _Arrête_!", " _Quiero olvidar_ " and more strange messages have been left across the ruined grooves of the single. Does it even work? I set it on the spindle, pressing and turning dials until the needle meets the outer ring of grooves. I jump, clutching my ears falsely when it starts off with the sounds of screaming and shouting—like human torture. It doesn't last for long as the guitars strum freely and the drums pound out a repetitive ornamentation. I know the lyrics before they even begin.

I slide my ring back on and watch it play for a few more seconds before I hit the pause switch. Not much of a treasure, but I guess Tristan is someone's groupie after all.  
I'm standing at the door frame when the song suddenly restarts. I turn around, and there is a thick black line that is spilling off the record player and growing by the second. Its hoard of dark insects and reptiles form the shape of a hive. I approach it against my conscience. A pure white hand makes a thudding sound on the creaking floorboards as it outstretches from the weaving pile of scales. Two hands. A shoulder. One head of hair. A torso and an abdomen. I take a step back to watch this unfold. Seductively, her hair falls over her breasts and the left side of her face. She rolls her neck to work out the crunchy knots that come with being enslaved to a–magic vinyl. The last reptile slips up her hip and into her hair. When she opens her eyes, they land on me. She's unclothed and just went through an entire metamorphosis. I'm disconcerted and doubtful of where I want to start a conversation. I'll start with this, I guess.

"How long you been on there?" I invite.

"A while," she purrs.

Her fingers make popping noises as she wiggles them softly in the moonlight. Her eyes are two different colors, one overfilled with amber tones and the other glowing in the dark like green liquid neon. She comes away from the arms of darkness, gripping my chin and scanning my features. She makes a noise of enjoyment.

"You are Marcellus, aren't you? That's a shame, I can feel your beauty. Hopefully, that ring keeps you that way. Just for now," she speaks in an alluring Hispanic accent.

Given the entrance she just made, I'm not thrilled she knows my name.

I groan as her nails leave the sides of my face and scratch the sides of my chin. Preoccupied with the stinging left on the side of my face, I am too slow to stop the one hand that shoots through my chest and squeezes around my heart until I fall unconscious.

ELIJAH

I knew tonight would somehow be rudely interrupted. I'm staring in the face of my drunken brother and his supposed friend, Lucien. The girls are indecent, just as I usually see them anywhere near either of these men. Without the intent to be so obvious, I observe of the masked dames creep away and up a nearby staircase while Niklaus ensures to make a mess of things.

Niklaus starts shouting, "Tristan? Tristan! Come out, come out, wherever you are! Unless, of course, you're afraid!"

"Niklaus," I sigh, stepping forward.

He turns in an ungraceful manner to face me. I immediately know this childlike side of my brother.

"Oh, you're hammered. Which should come as a very little surprise to anyone here, but it does hamper the festivities somewhat. So, could I recommend that you find the nearest exit?" I requested, "Could you take your playthings with you, too?"

Klaus shoves his champagne glass into my hands, staggering farther into the ballroom.

"You know, I used to find it insulting that I was barred from your special little club. But now, I realize that I lack the flexibility to become a member—I could never get my head far enough up my own ass," he slurs at the crowd.

He bows and I exchange irritable glances. Lucien and their companions were delighted by Klaus' behavior. Nik walks back to me and takes the glass from my hand, downing the rest of the champagne.

"Come on. Let's go. This party's dead anyway," Lucien called.

I need air. I'm walking toward the gardens, but I stop when I hear a very alarming notice given to Aya by a servant.

"It's gone," the woman tells Aya.

I stop just behind the wall faces the staircase.

"What?" Aya hisses.

The woman clarifies, "The ring. I gave it to Mohinder as you ordered, but he thinks it may have already been stolen from his pocket. No one can find it."

It brings a bit of a smile to my face. Just then, Marcel is coming down the staircase in a daze. He's looking down at his ring carefully.

"You've taken it back and avoided the final test. How very admirable. We're leaving," I state abruptly.

Marcel swallows, "We need to talk. I think Tristan has a new friend, and–"

"The time has come!" Tristan's voice bellows.

Marcel is hesitant to follow Tristan anywhere, but the reassuring look he gives me tells me I don't have to follow. It could cause a greater push for him to join them if I go.

I can hear what goes on from downstairs, enjoying wine at the bar like that's all I need in this moment. Marcel claims the ring was found on the floor of the ballroom, but he knows exactly who took it.

"I'm sorry, but I did not take your—"

Marcel disrupts Aya. "Hold on, I didn't say it was you. You were just the middle woman. You slipped it off my finger when I arrived, and then you passed it onto Mohinder...the first member of the Strix I met tonight."

Their voices are hollow from far away. I imagine him turning to Mohinder, hidden among thieves. I take a casual stroll through hired dancers, party-crashers and staring acquaintances.

"Of course, as you know, that's only half the battle," Tristan assures Marcellus.

I take my time going up the stairs. The electricity suddenly filters in and out of consciousness. The flickers startle some guests. Mohinder paces on thin floorboards.

"There's no shame in dying at the hands of your superior," says he.

Marcel scoffs, "Not much glory in it, either."

Crash. The noise is loud, like a car ramming through someone's dwelling. I prefer to wait until it ends, but then there's a roar of a man in pain. I rush to the scene, worried it very well is Marcel, unprotected against the vile manners of my vampires. But it's not him.

Seven vampires lie dead and pale out in the hallway. Marcel huddles in the corner of the room, wiping blood off his lip. Tristan De Martel has cowered to the floor, Aya and Mohinder hastening to his side. I'm not frightened. I take a step back when something moves against my newly shined loafers. It's too dark to be a hallucination of the floor, it moves too quickly and too oddly to call it a mere shoelace. It's a snake. Marcel is only viewing the creature disappear out into the party. I turn to see it off, but it evaporates into the air before my exhausted eyes. Tristan cusses under his breath as he lifts up his pant leg. The bite is swollen, graying and oozing a black liquid.

"Who let her out..." Tristan begins to shout. "Who let her go!"

The remaining vampires exchange glances. Aya turns to a dim item behind her on a desk, then glances about the room.

"Notify the security and search the party. Don't let her escape," she calmly commands.

A slightly wounded Marcel skims the rim of the room and uses me for support. I escort him out before anyone can stop us. The vampires downstairs are taking turns staring at the staircase because they all know their leader is wounded. Marcel grips the staircase railing before reach the bottom. I follow his gaze. A tall man in black clothes watches us, turning away and rushes down a zig-zag path of people, out the door.

Later on in the night, Marcellus and I haven't had the chance to even consider what happened only an hour beforehand. We simply ogle at each other from opposite ends of the Abattoir courtyard, above the scene in which Lucien sits beside his young and tired foreseer. They were having a brief moment of reunion, whereas Freya had brought her back to us—it doesn't matter how ethical of a plan she had. In which there was a silence, I filled the room with the sound of explanation over talking to Marcel about it first. I don't think either of us could interpret it, anyway. Perhaps, Niklaus or Freya could.

"A daylight ring returned by a venomous snake. Did it also ask of you to take a bite out of an apple?" Klaus jokes bitterly.

His eyes are narrowed in the direction of Marcel. He appears as though he might be holding onto something more that occurred tonight.

"Do not think it a coincidence, that creature sent Tristan into a panic. We need to trace the origin of the vermin—that manifestation. I have a feeling there is a party discounted seeking to undermine the Strix. And it looks as though were already at each other's necks," I suggest.

"It was the girl," Marcel confesses without looking up from his whiskey.

Klaus turns his head towards him.

Marcel swallows, "He had her on this...magical music record. She led me to her and she used my ring as a bargaining item so she could trick me into letting her go. I think she turned into the snake that bit Tristan."

Klaus sneers, "Should I expect that you didn't want to speak up because the lass did you a grandiose favor?"

He's unhappy with Marcel's choices tonight, and he has yet to be subtle about it.

I question, "Was there any indication of something to call her by? Perhaps, something to denote her form of magic or otherwise traits?"

"She was definitely a witch, just not the kind you find around here," is all Marcel can say.

"Did you see the weapon?" We hear Lucien ask the young witch Alexis, calling attention away from the topic at hand.

I hear Alexis rhyme, "She doesn't like to be called that. Though, if you attempt it she can bring about more misfortune than a black cat."

Klaus looks over at me specifically for clarification if she only speaks in patterns. Lucien repeats himself and she tries hard to give him a smile.

"...This is much more than an armament... In order to understand, it must be seen," she replies.

We all turn to face them. Lucien looks at me willingly. I walk forward as she offers me her hand. I'm slightly afraid of what I might see. I slow down the sinking of my fangs into her skin to ease her into it, unlike Klaus, who would stab his incisors into her flesh with animal instincts. She's showing me things—all too difficult to pull into focus except for those that I have to.

There's blood everywhere...our belongings are destroyed. A woman with long red hair, her gun pointed directly at me. Finn appears; he's in an inconceivable type of pain. My heart skips a beat for every movement that goes against a pitch black scene, the thousands of golden eyes surrounding their leader's red orbs. My brother Kol's perished corpse. A symbol of failed peace.

Alexis is choking on something warm and rust-smelling. That is when she gives me the image I know best. The still bayou, still trying to wash away my past sins. A hand shoots out of the unbroken surface and latches onto the land. She stares straight at me with her heterochromatic eyes, but imaginatively moving past her, they are looking onward as Niklaus is torn to shreds by a mob of blurry faces.

I come up for air, spitting out the blood I've drank.

"She's—poisoned," I gag.

Alexis promptly draws her last breath in the arms of Lucien. He panics, his heart breaking because he once felt a short and vague sentiment for the girl. Klaus and Marcel are waiting to see what I'll do next after I've regurgitated everything I've taken from her system. I don't want to tell them anything because then, I would have to tell them everything. For, you don't tell the children that there is a snake deep in the summer of your home—you take care of it yourself and you don't say a word.


	2. Blood Honey

**KLAUS**

The smell of lavender has never been an enticing smell when laced with blood. She makes herself obvious to us in that way, thinking herself a siren of vicious sailors. Every time I look upon the purple flora, my mind latches onto a charientism that targets my weakness and Aurora recognizes that.

Elijah kneels beside a freshly dead woman in our courtyard this morning, holding the poem left with the vulgar gift.

"I remember her to be a better poet," I sigh.

Elijah shakes his head. "I don't think this is lacking in poetry... We have two menacing women on our hands."

There is no shortage of malignant belles here, and I suppose our family is simply the blood honey that attracts the timeless uprooted maniacs once in a while. I could neglect to picture Aurora De Martel as the malevolent force that works on the same plane as a venomous witch, but this city is known to bring out the worst in others. It's how we intended it; and for us to be the judge of friend and foe illusions.

Our mystery witch could wait. I had to see Aurora for myself.

I touch Elijah lightly on the shoulder. "She wants to be found. Shall we?"

"Are you so incredibly eager? You haven't said her name in a millennium and neither have we, at your command," recalls Elijah.

I stop in my tracks, reckoning, "I won't wait so that she can place her calling cards all over my home, Elijah."

"If you're going... Listen to me first. The vision Alexis bestowed upon me...Aurora was in one of them, but she wasn't the only thrill of the past that bubbled to surface," he quickly summarizes.

He cannot to shy me away from the topic. Not after what she did to me and will attempt to do to me again.

"If you wish to tell me something that could possibly divide us then _te absolvo_ , brother. We find her, we'll kill her together," I resolve.

I can see it in his face that he's not satisfied with that, but I simply can't heed to it.

 **AURORA**

I'll be patient. I won't excite myself for the reunion, although I am quietly confident that I can make him desire me again. My dear Niklaus. A sweet agenda I've looked forward to since the break of morning.

I confirmed the florist girl was delivered with a clear and lovely message to him, I had the shop to myself—it will be a quiet place for us to spend time alone. I consider all supernatural personae to be the exact same: offer them blood or sacrifice (or both) and you are in their good graces. I've never failed to predict these things, I swear I could be just as great of a wizard as the one Lucien is lusting after right now. Poor thing; though, I can't say it doesn't breed me approval at least one witch dies a day around here. They're the real nationalists, praying for their own private America in which all vampires suddenly drop dead. Maybe the flower wench was a witch; maybe I had performed a service to the community.

I keep the floral shop closed, but some can't take a hint. A dainty clacking noise appears behind me, a small tap to end the concert of noise suggesting someone is in front of the counter.

I'm admiring the custom orders on the shelves, asserting a clear notice to the customer, "We're closed."

Although they do not speak a word after mine, I can feel eyes on the back of my neck. It makes the curly red tresses on the back of my neck stand on end as I recognize the moment is finally here.  
"Nik," I softly smile.  
I turn to face him. The name does not fit the personage.  
My breath stops behind a glass ceiling lodged in my throat, unable to tango with the air being intoxicated. I'm staring at a graveyard angel, not a human being. Hands in her the pockets of the coat forged from werewolf's fur, her lips parted as she looks at me blankly.

"Don't insult me," Jezebel monotonously answered back.  
My teeth begin to rake at the inside of my lips.  
"Can you provide the card since you're here? Something touched with a bit of tough love, he's very fond of that," her alluring Spanish English echoes in the room.

"Jezebel Zhukov, you haven't aged a day. A pint of human suffering a day keeps the wrinkles away, I trust?" I feign my boredom with her.

"Cures one for every dozen of yours," she remarks, "I remember Tristan being too ashamed of your loose screws to take you anywhere. Or does he even know you're here?"

My smile is as much of a bargain sale as her own.

"He will, eventually. But do tell. What is it you're doing here, Jezebel?" I question

Caustically, she ripostes, "You just know how much I love tourist destinations, jazz, greasy food, bugs, the South, in general. But most important, I'm celebrating 200 years of life on this miserable planet. Who better to spend that with other than my favorite group of horror shows?"  
She brushes past my right shoulder, picking up a fresh and softly hued batch of lilies, examining them carefully between her velvety pink creme talons.  
"I cannot say I did not miss your optimism. Or you, at all, for the matter" I remark. "I fantasized about it every day while I was in that monastery. Just knowing you and me...we could start over in Cannes again. Maybe Glasgow. Bangkok. But I'd always remember post-dreaming—you're just one of the things that made me _have to_ get better. So, go on and tell me...what has life has been like since I left you for dead?"  
She plucks out a useless leaf amidst the floral heap and maneuvers toward the back of the shop. Her silence beckons me to follow.  
Perhaps, she hasn't yet forgiven me. Truly, it is a hard day when a righteous witch is brought to her knees by the glorious love of a lowly vampire.  
"There is one thing I have never been able to forget about you, Aurora. I know it's hard for you. You've lost so much time, so much heart because it is hard for you to love yourself. But it has never stopped you from giving your all to the people you fall for..." she speaks softly.  
Under dull fluorescent light, Jezebel tosses the flowers onto a scuffed wooden table and plucks a pair of pliers from the shelves threateningly.  
"Albeit, you almost killed me. Confining me to a plastic disc for ninety odd years was a very low blow in comparison to what I had done. But I'm not upset. It'd be too unreasonable; you can't help your judgment. You're so...fragile," she continues with a quiet jump on her last syllable.  
The pliers punctuate my words with one loud _shnk._ The flowers drop like a small dead animal back onto the table, the bottom of their stems still in her white grip. She turns to me, face like a tranquilized beast who hasn't closed their eyes.  
"So, you've figured it out," I genuinely reply. "But what I did was not in action of fragility, or fear, for the matter. I was sane enough to rule my love for you unreturned and toxic above all things. You were using us as bait for a sinister cult! They could have killed us had I not acted quickly enough! I can't say I'm not thankful. because of you, I got the help I needed. I'm better now."  
She takes my hands and wraps them around the lilies she holds while she maneuvers around the back room as if she had been here before. Gracefully, she reaches behind me, her lioness breath my shoulder as she tears a thick black ribbon from the stand just behind the supply chests.  
"You gave me access to your mind and I pushed the right buttons. It isn't as exacerbating a feat as you would think,'" she explicitly recalls, "but not all of your problems are just going to go away by making amends with exes and crossing your fingers they rescue your sireline. Everything that is happening these days could have been stopped years ago. Because of you, they still exist. You thought you could lock me up and throw away the key. Well, _mierda._ You're stuck here with me," she nearly whispers as she finishes tying the ribbon around the arrangement  
The bell on the shop door rings like a little bird.  
Clear as day, the two of us hear the wild cry of the hybrid. "Aurora!"  
Jezebel steps away from me and licks her lips, taking the bouquet from me carefully, finishing, " _Le acompaño en el sentimiento_. I have places to be."  
The power in the room fleets for the moment, just enough time for her to disappear without the slightest trace of her presence prior.

VINCENT GRIFFITH

People will believe whatever stories they hear in the city of New Orleans. It's the pit of bad behavior, and everybody's in on it. Don't call the cops, they'll think it's a prank. Refrain from complaining to the mayor's office, he's been paid to stand there, smile and read a list of vampire demands. Do not ask for help; nothing's worth a fatal bargain, and it's been that way for centuries because of the Mikaelsons. Every witch, human, and werewolf has to deal with it—except those who live in secret.

I've learned that anybody who's not a witch is going to call them by one title and one book of dogmas to follow. But there's always been dichotomy, like the floors of Death Valley where they say the floor opens up to Hell itself.

Covens seek structure, justice, morality, community—the occasional sacrificial pig. They know us as a coven because we've existed longest. So what of our fallen angels, the ones that nosedived straight into hell? There are Hives, Dens, Sororities, Mathrows, Murders—but generally we think of the path of no return when we ask forbidden technicalities: The Knot.

Knots are man's making—they don't grow in nature, but they're addictive in taste and will leave a strong yearning for the evil under Earth's matrimonial veil. If you hiss like the Knot, everyone can hear the corruption in your voice. They can hear the auction of your body, the internal brutalities of your sisters and brothers, the chomping of "sacred" flesh between human teeth, the murmur of false prophets on your lips, the pottery of false realities and beings, and all.

I didn't learn any of this from living here all my life; New Orleans is a bubble, nobody gets to know what's outside unless they get permission to leave. I never had to; I learned from the girl squashed beneath my family's hidden past.

The gravel below my shoe soles crackles with every step. I look around the concaving row of crypts, struggling to stand tall on hilly terrain.

"Serve Him well Pythoness, saved not by Heaven but by the sweet sound of jazz," I taunt her out of hiding.

"Cheeky," Jezebel says half-heartedly from behind me.

I rotate on my heel, looking at the presently poised and patient version of Jezebel.

" _Has envejecido mal_ ," she smiles, pacing around to the front of me.

I greet her, "By aging poorly, you mean I'm aging in general, right? Just because I still have magic doesn't mean I have to stall my youth to get things done. That's not the way to live. Speaking of, I expected more of an entrance."

"My instinct is telling me not to go too big around here. I don't want to scare anybody off too early," gradually, she responds.

Jezebel walks past me and into the threshold of the Black Clay Graveyard, the moonlight seeping down her back the further into the deadly garden she goes.

She claims, "This place is as much of a shithole as I remember it, but it's the last place anybody would look for me. They think I'm scared of it. On the contrary. The angrier I grow looking at this city, the more beloved I become."

I came here to confirm one thing and one thing only. I came to confirm the thing we mutually fear is still out there.

"Yeah, I bet. You know Tristan De Martel is dying?" I hint.

Her eyes glow a pale white in the light of the moon like a blind cat. I watch her disappear behind the corner of Gibson musician crypt, the clack of her pointed velvet boots going down the candlelit walkway.

"You think that will get the Knot's attention?" my voice echoes. "I think you've got enough problems already."

She intimidatingly appears in the grave doorway inches from my side.

"Tristan can save himself and he knows it. There's something he has that I need, and within the next four hours, I expect to get it. If I don't, I'm not hopeless. He's not the one of importance I seek," she purrs.

I mumble a charm beneath my breath that mystically awakens the junky candelabras of the Laveau grave that still contains undead candlesticks.

"I couldn't give a damn what happens to anybody except my people. You warned me the day I found your vinyl—there's something in me connected to old magic, and I have no say over it. It will oppress me and the people around me. That means I've got to face the Knot all the same as you do, and I'm not gonna let you stir the pot before it gets here."

She rotates her head minimally, her eyes shifting to stay on my face.

"If it's self-preservation you want, you have it within you. You just don't know how to control it yet. You need only ask for a little help," she entices.

Jezebel always liked to rub it in my face the damage my ancestors did; she would me of its true evils and suddenly, begin encouraging the DuBois shadow I began to live in once upon a time.

I deny, "Old magic took my wife and it took my baby and for them, I won't let it take me, too. I came lookin' for you tonight because the coven is afraid. They know you're here, you've committed some crimes that they haven't forgotten. The least you could do is make a statement of surrender to our laws. Maybe we can help you."

Her gaze narrows, hellish locks of her curls fall over her bronze complexion. Her belief must still stand tall: no one can help because it's always a one-woman job to take down other women. "Jez. The Knot will win when it's just you putting up the fight against them. For what? The Mikaelsons? They aren't worth it," I lecture.

"You make it sound like it is as simple as that," Jezebel asserts, her voice scraping a pile of bones. "You clearly don't know shit, or else, you would begging for my help."

Her nimble hands slip away from the frame of the Henderson mausoleum, and she disappears into thin air just as the sun is coming up.

AYA

He's broken a sweat so noticeable it appears as though he's been for a swim. They have his hands in theirs, Tristan's grip nearly bone-breaking. The snake venom coursing through his veins causes extensive pain in his major arteries and in his cranium.

"Her name—is Jezebel Zhukov," Tristan tries to speak calmly through the pain to us, "She is a product of the Knot occult and the Mother Pack in Europe. Once upon a time, I attempted to use her human body as leverage to do my will. She wants to know where she can find it, but under no circumstances can we let that happen."

How stubborn he can be, sometimes. His request is not doable. If she is left without her desires, we are left without a leader.

I evade voicing my doubts and question, "If she's without a body, how is she here in the physical? How does she walk among the humans?"

He tries to sit up, but I have the other members present lay him back on his loveseat. He is in no position to strain himself to be a leader at the moment.

"Tristan," someone new breathes in our space.

A spastic head of fragile red curls comes speed-walking in, at her brother's side in an instant.

"Aurora. Aurora, what have you—"

"I escaped. I had to come, you know that," Miss De Martel pleas. "That wretched girl. She always ruins everything!"

Tristan shushes his frantic sister with a gentle squeeze atop her knuckles.

Tristan commands, "You mustn't trifle with her, sister. Stay out of her way, unless you've already come to meddle with our sires. She's here for them. If you are not careful..."

This won't do. I don't know Aurora personally, but I know her reputation: a lunatic beyond one's sympathy.

"You can trust me! I've already moved Rebekah. She's safe. If I can get to her brothers, they shall be—"

Tristan barks, sweat flying, "What?"

This can go on for some time.

"Tristan, how do we stop the Pythoness?" I raise my voice above Aurora.

Unsure of who to tend to first, even in his dying moments, he chooses me.

"The vessel has a curse placed on it...strong enough to make her into physical, harm-able matter. She can only be killed if the vessel _and_ her body are both demolished," He pants.

I snap my fingers at the two newest men to join the Strix, Mario and Refta. They equip themselves with stakes, Refta leaving to find one of our witches.

"No!" Tristan cries helplessly. "This bite...can only be undone by her magic. If she dies, so do I."

Aurora looks between the two of us, waiting for a new idea to suddenly appear out of thin air. If we don't think of something fast, Aurora is, at best, liable to do something far too precarious. Then, we are a step closer to defeat.

"This was outside," Refta tells me as he returns to the room.

He's holding a bouquet of ripe white lilies, a card attached to its bundle. I look from the ailing Tristan to Refta, shooing him away. I am handed the bouquet's card, where the sender's initials are mockingly signed off with a devil's horns and tail.

 _"I believe in sweet vengeance, risking the denial of forgiveness. For, I'm not the one who fears the word 'animal'." - JZ_

KLAUS

There was a time when I counted the days when I presumed she was gone. A tender yert pierced piece of my thousand years ending somewhere else in the world quiescently. Had she ever made it home? Or did this place finally eat her alive?  
Watching her stand on the curbside with the rest of the on-looking tourists, it was clear I had wasted my time.  
The soft black color of her curls wrapped in moonlight and her innocent, pensive expression gleamed brighter than the burnt out streetlight bulbs in the SUV side mirror.

The feeling I carried for years that the tale of the girl in the big green house hadn't yet ended has collided with dread's pale horse. My heart jumps higher than the vehicle roof.  
Elijah shuts the passenger door, though, I have yet to tear my eyes away from the mirror. His silence tells me he has seen the same ghost.  
"This came to Marcel from the Strix gala photographer this morning," Elijah sighed.  
He put it on the dashboard for me, but I needn't look.  
"Jezebel Zhukov was the uninvited guest at that party. Marcel confirmed she is the witch Tristan had in custody," continues my brother.  
It was hard to think clearly, though, my instinct was to leave this car and go out there. To dare her to set the record straight.  
"Niklaus," Elijah says to my silence, "we must pick these battles one at a time. And we must start here. Aurora—"  
"Were you the one who dared lend your vulnerability to these women?" I repay. "I will decide how and when we will meet them on the path to understanding this prophecy..."  
My eyes land on the photograph Elijah had brought to the dashboard. In the crowds of ballgowns and tuxedos, with red sharpie Marcel circled the reflection of the youngest person in the picture, eyes on me in the captured reflection of the localized decorations.  
"Even if it means...I must do what I couldn't bring myself to long ago," I admit at last.  
The live mirage of Jezebel in my side mirror startles me by awaiting my glance. She does well not to break it until the very last second when she is absorbed by the crowd.


	3. Dangerous Liaisons

JEZEBEL ZHUKOV

 _Can you hear me? Do I sound dead to you?_

 _Can you feel me? Am I cold?_

 _Let me tell you. My throat rings like a bell and my hands are pulsating with heat for you._

 _Still numbed up? Just wait, bitch. You'll see me soon._

Faint itches all over my skin. Little whispers and vengeful promises. I could make a poem out of them if my creativity weren't better spent on living until tomorrow. That's all I ask. For there to be a tomorrow.  
Slaps of wind flutter and graze my ear like a feather. They talk all at once, and they don't shut up. Seventeen voices brave enough to come forward when I was only looking for one.  
"Celeste," I spoke softly. "You're being awfully quiet."

My eyes closed and vulnerable to the distracting glow of my veins when facing the rising sun. The flapping of their wings made my chest itch with irritation.

 _Focus on me. You'll regret it when I dig my way back up._

 _No hell. No heaven. Just the dark and the hoard of us, my sweet._

 _There's a reason your slut mother gave you your name_.

 _Devil's meat! I escaped!_

I open my eyes for a split second to watch the sun divide the land in half. My head was above the golden line of sunrise and my shoulders down submerged in the watered down shade. The swarming butterflies covered the tender bark of these sickly looking bayou trees and the dry soil of Louisiana. I sweat from my neck, my chest, and my stomach, like I was wrapped in plastic. They were drawing on my energy; it was making it harder to find my old friend. Though, I am crossing over into a dangerous place, I choose to keep the connection open.  
"I can hear you. Tossing and turning, making the leaves shake. I can hardly breathe. What's stopping you from coming forward?" I muttered.  
I breathed with invisible cellophane over my mouth in quiet intervals. I jolt in pain, like I've had the wind knocked out of me. My sighs started to make me lightheaded. The butterflies close in, covering every inch of my visible skin and biting down.  
I slouch forward until I am on all fours in front of the rock I'd been sitting on.  
" _Dale,_ you stupid bitch," I groan.  
The flapping wings and the sound of impetulent feeding gets to me within a matter of seconds.  
 _"Sever se sanctum_ ," I cry.  
Dispersing, the screaming and violent butterflies flee to the ends of the earth. I lay flat, trying to catch my breath and let myself heal from the tick mark scabs of teeth. I hear the sound of leaves crunching nearby.  
"I don't appreciate being spied on," I sneer.  
The woman begins, "I don't mean to interrupt your craft, I just thought i'd come to introduce myself in the flesh. I'm Aya Al-Rashid. Tristan De Martel's right-hand."  
It is hard to respect someone who refers to themselves as a right-hand man.  
"How is he feeling? I heard it was poison," I spoke tartly, sitting myself up.  
"Just between us girls. What's your secret? Wolf venom? White oak? Vervain concoction?" she plays along.  
"Nothing you'll be able to find that easily," I comment.  
Watching me get to my feet and adjust the top of my shirt, Aya remarks, "Really? Because Tristan says otherwise. Who do you think you are kidding, Jezebel? He doesn't have your body, he doesn't have anything you want."  
Untrue.  
"This does not have to do with you and your circle of friends. It's about me and Tristan. And Aurora. Without my body, I can't do much but turn into a reptile and talk to dead people. I'm going to find it. So, if it _is_ in your custody, I'll give you this rare chance to take back the lie you just told," I swear.  
She scoffs, "Oh, I'm not that simple. Let's hope you come up with a cure by the end of the day. Because if we lose a leader, we're willing to pick a fight with more than a group of angry sirelines."  
I smile gently, letting her wallow with me in a tense silence.  
"A plague on both our houses," I close the conversation and pushing past Aya.

"Miss?" a voice echoes.  
The little earthquake of my brain stops. I swim back into consciousness in a new place, a nervous young man standing next to me. I roll my head in his direction, my fingertips grazing the side of my neck to disguise their shake. He looks to the glass of alcohol in his hand.  
"From your friends at the bar. It's the '72 Bourbon Whiskey," he swallows.  
I notice the number of eyes on me in this... Where am I?  
As I meet all pairs, I shove the foot of the wine glass back in the waiter's direction.  
"I don't drink what I didn't see being made. Who sent it?" I cover.  
He looks past me to the two boys sitting ever so proper in their seats and waiting for me to notice.  
" _Leche_ ," I profanely huff.  
I pick myself up, taking the glass from the waiter and dragging my feet over to the Mikaelson brothers. The two brave  
"Jezebel. What a pleasure to see you," Elijah Mikaelson tries a polite approach.  
I let them watch as I toss the expensive drink into the drain at the draft counter, setting the glass down roughly in front of Niklaus.  
I remark, "Then, don't look so upset."  
"We apologize for the informal greeting, but I'm afraid you've broken quite a big rule in our city overnight," Klaus informs.  
"I wasn't aware there were rules, you'll have to forgive me. I don't subscribe to the Mikaelson view of the planet," I speak.  
Klaus moves his coat aside from the barstool between them, trying to make the sight of us seem friendly before a crowd of familiar faces. I don't sit on command.  
Scheming, he smiles, "Don't be such a toughie, love. We only wish to take the next few minutes to explain them to you."  
"If it drowns out all the brass music, be my guest," I reply.  
Elijah starts, "It's been told you are accountable for causing a ruckus at the Strix party on Halloween, the poisoning of Tristan De Martel and possibly Lucien Castle's Seer, and conspiring with the Regent of New Orleans. Do you decline the charges?"  
I respond casually, "I decline conspiracy. I had a conversation with a close friend in private. And you can confirm Alexis as a casualty. She was in the way, and there's just something about a girl who rhymes in her sleep that gets on my nerves. That's that."  
Klaus smiles mistrustfully.  
"I expect that you don't plan on further bending the unspoken rules of thumb that much during your stay, little witch. I supposed your centuries-old vanishing act was a result of your discreet gifts?" he questions.  
I partially grin, stating, "I'm surprised you haven't heard, I'm the archangel of python magic. Then again, I've been working with several mystical warrants for my arrest. I haven't done much talking lately."  
Elijah's light tone is meant to mislead me. "Why are you here, Jezebel?"  
"Do I have to sign a liability waiver?" I challenge him.  
"You helped a relative of ours. Marcellus Gerard. And then, you proceeded to assault Tristan De Martel and Alexis Griffin. Might we suggest you're rather casual with our pieces and their numbers?" Klaus continues.  
They flatter themselves far too much.  
"Life has been long, it should be no shock if we fought the same resistances," I reject his insinuation. "Marcellus is going to make a big mistake joining their love club. And personally, I'm saving Tristan a step. The bite can be cured, but he's in trouble with me. So long as he keeps me from what is mine, he will die slowly for...the next half-hour."  
I lift the wrist of the gentleman behind me and check his watch. He only watches me do so, too invested in his liquor to react.  
"And what exactly could he have done?" Elijah inquires.  
"I don't mean to offend you in any of the ways you have offended me, but I'm not divulging information to strangers in a bar," I jumps in.  
Klaus shows slight bitterness as he stands from his seat.  
"As much of a blessing Tristan's quick demise would be to us, he holds a set of very important items at the moment. He's the only one who will tell us where they are," he claims.  
The one mistake a man always makes is looking into my eyes directly; it's the same as handing me his wallet.  
"Rebekah," I recognize. "He did something to her. Mikaelsons typically travel in threes. Don't they?"  
Niklaus merrily widens his grin.  
Klaus comments, "I always had a penchant for negotiating with witches. They prevail in the strangest ways."  
"I have empathy for you, but not much. I'm not going to save Tristan until I make my point," I state.  
"I understand there's been talk of a specific item in the your possession that the Strix is needing back. As there is something of theirs you're looking to retrieve—however gruesome. So, if we ransacked your hideaway—which I'm certain is where the witches said they've tracked you to—and found your treasure, you'll have no means of getting what you want let alone ever getting back the possession Tristan seeks. I hope I've accurately persuaded you. Otherwise, I'd quite like to see what others would give for a thrift exchange for Rebekah," Klaus threatens me.  
I am certain, "You wouldn't do that."  
"On the contrary. We're not sparing feelings here, are we?" he counters.  
I'll admit, I expected some leniency for old times' sake, but if I can't have it, I need to find another way to avoid a new battle. If he takes my vessel, or is able to find it for the matter, he won't hesitate. If I let Tristan have the antidote now, I'm set back a step.  
I've already considered it the hiccup in my agenda. If I kill Tristan, I get Rebekah killed, too. I promised myself no _significant_ collateral.  
Dreading it, I realize I'll be spending the rest of the day promising myself there's a next time. I rip the sapphire poison locket off my neck resentfully and set it down on the counter next to his hand. Klaus picks it up boastfully, ensuring it has contents inside.  
I look to the eavesdropping waiter close by, whistling to get his attention over the loud noise of the tourist-ridden bar.  
"Order drinks for everyone. These two will get whatever they like," I request.  
Elijah leers down at his lap, his partner in crime numbly accepting my counteraction when I take my leave.

ELIJAH

This family has an unfortunate toll on the bodies it tries to embrace. There is a known few who have survived our traditions and our vows, but those same few always seem to come back to us, still in love or left in hate.  
Aurora drifts in the middle. Niklaus was looking at a reflection of his flaws in Aurora, Aurora who was so alone she would love anyone who showed genuine interest in her. That is what I was convinced of when I chose to compel her to break his heart: they were in love for the sake of their self-assurances. Klaus still hasn't forgiven me, and I suspect he won't. But I dare wonder why not if he has only been at the whim of Aurora's fantasies in order to get to Rebekah's stolen corpse?  
The story doesn't repeat when speaking of the misled fawn who walked into the darkness. Jezebel was a turn-around for Niklaus; a patient, open-minded, humble soul, doused in a toxic spill of privacy. With that said, Niklaus latched on far too tightly. I never blamed my brother for how strongly he cares and how easily he hurts. Time deprives us of the sweet and quick memory of real love, keeping it at the bottom of the toy chest as new and less important brushes with passion come and go.  
That is why I fear the same mistake once learned with Aurora. What I know I did to my brother's heart 200 years ago will only reinforce the suspected malice behind the 1,000 year old crime I've paid for in thankfully minor ways.  
"It's all been to protect you, respectively. Lucien and I have always been enemies, but if we had arrived together as allies with news of a bleak future, you would have doubted us. It was maintaining appearances," Tristan excuses his band of allies around the Thanksgiving table. "We came to protect you and ourselves. We have never wavered on this point."  
Klaus looks up, continuing, "And the bodies on my streets? Also your protection?"  
"Now that's just business. Old tactics for success," Lucien answers simply, "is a frightened human populace. It is much easier to control. If tourism should decline and the local vampires are deprived of fresh blood, well, you saw how quickly Marcel joined hands with us."  
Klaus laughs at them, "Pedestrian. I would have expected something more from such glamorized theatrics."  
Lucien leans toward him. "Well, you're not going to let us take all the blame are you? There's a killer snake charmer on the loose with a heavy record for disaster. Ask yourselves this: what were the odds of Japan to experience an earthquake and tsunami with the follow-up of a toxic spill of radiation? Because of one Yakuza boss's mistake."  
"Pray tell, what did Tristan have to do to be next?" I question.  
Tristan and Aurora exchange glances before the hesitant response.  
"My mistakes were not nearly as recent. Not nearly a mistake at all; just an ill-prepared venture," Tristan sighs.  
Klaus pries, "We have the time."  
Aurora almost looks as if she doesn't want the pending speech of Tristan's attraction to Jezebel Zhukov. Rightfully so.  
"Once upon a time, I met the great werewolf king, Benvolio Zhukov. And three hundred years fast, I met his good sons and strange little daughter, Jezebel. They lived in a community heavily rallied around werewolf pride—my request was that his influential knighthood of the Venjánca join hands with the Strix. When he declined, I found it fair to challenge his kingliness. For, the Zhukovs are not noble Spanishmen. They acculturated to the Anglo identity and moved Westward. In reality, they're still the brothers of the Aztecs, known as the Xichuatls. If the werewolf Viceroy were to find out about the rat's nest in their midst…"  
"They'd be executed for imitating noble lineage," I finished.  
Yes, I knew the story quite well. Because Jezebel had told it before and managed to leave Tristan's name a blank.  
"Correct. In response, they told their disciples of vampire presence in the hallowed colony of _Cuerpo Sagrado_. They took one of us as a hostage, and they demanded all of the Strix's territory in exchange," Tristan finishes his eyes brushing over Aurora's expression to ensure she was alright with the telling of the story.  
"I always love a tale of woe; it lifts my spirits. I suppose blackmailing the wicked witch's family is what got you poisoned?" Klaus comments.  
Lucien answers to that, "That will take more than a few minutes to tell. We will say that we have connections to a group of certain lineage that can and will kill her for poor compliance. We are just taking advantage and earning profit."  
I continue, "Speaking of whom, did she not get the invitation?"  
"You've offered the girl a seat at the table of five vampires with underlying tendencies to discriminate against witch-kind, two of said vampires she has had a romantic history with. And, we're eating dead animals on one of two holidays she despises. In other words, you told her a joke," Lucien comments.  
Niklaus appears to see the reasoning in that.  
Aurora is visibly irritated with this amount of discussion of another girl in front of Niklaus.  
Aurora says to Tristan, "Brother, you had something you desperately wanted to share with our hosts?"  
"Yes. This is a good bridge into what I'd like to discuss next, actually. Seeing as Jezebel is a part of your prophecy—"  
"If that is true, it's the first I'm hearing of it," Niklaus immediately interrupts.  
I straighten my back as he brings me into the conversation, properly setting his utensils down. Niklaus waits for one of us to explain. I don't want to talk about it, but he'll demand it of me sooner of later. Fearing the idea of bringing that girl back into our lives, I let it be known what Alexis the Seer showed me.  
"Alexis bared some reference to Jezebel's tie to the prophecy through her visions on the night she died," I confess, trying to put the case to rest before it's open. "However, given she wants nothing to do with us, we should all return the favor and leave the girl be. A war can't be started until we provoke the other party."  
"If you truly believed that you would not have sent her an invitation behind my back," Klaus defensively notes.  
Lucien continues, "But you should be thankful he did. The invitation is what kept her away. For, she would not like the proposition we're about to make. The vessel she was transported on has become vacant, or at least we plan on making it so. When the time comes, we'd like you to take possession of her artifact."  
My head shoots up when Lucien halts his proposition at the distant sound of clacking heels in the distance and slam of a door.  
Jezebel sharply turns the corner into the courtyard, looking directly at Tristan. I catch the matching eyes in the room, looking up at her like a renaissance painting.  
Lucien sighs, "Speak of the devil."  
Lucien's hand turns white upon picking up Jezebel's limp hand. She merely watches him try not to be overcome with pain as the numbingly hot sensation in his hand resides a little longer.  
"I'm not here for the fake occasion. My vessel is gone," Jezebel hisses.  
"And?" I playfully remark.  
She takes out her keychain calmly, flicking open the brightly-sheathed swiss knife it holds. She stabs it just below her heart, and I receive the pain. As she carves upward, face stiff as wooden board, I watch my blood stain my freshly pressed dress shirt. The feeling of severed arteries heightens.  
As she pulls it out of her chest, she hasn't shed a drop of blood. However, the neckline of her blouse is now beyond repair.  
I hustle to catch my breath and to retain my composure.  
"I'm upset. And if it isn't rule of thumb already, an upset witch is a homicidal bitch," Jezebel promises.  
Klaus irritably groans, setting his utensil down loudly. "Tristan, let the girl have her toys and leave her out of the equation. This is between you and your sires."  
Jezebel switches her shark-like posterior in his direction.  
"You have made it clear you were disturbed by my presence here. Tristan is not the only impending source of bone dust in this room," Jezebel barks.  
"Well, if you were going to try to kill my brother, why not return the gesture?" Aurora smiles wickedly.  
"Nobody's killing anyone," the Mikaelson sister, Freya, says as she steps out of one of the back rooms. "It's in safe keeping."

FREYA

Jezebel's chest moves a little with a suppressed sarcastic sound effect.  
"Jezebel Zhukov. I've heard a lot about you," I greet her.  
With an air of superiority, I come toward her.  
"Every mother's cautionary tale has a good villain, doesn't it?" she says flatly.  
"I wouldn't say that. Just another byproduct of two rather controversial parents who left you their name and not their fortune," I remark.  
"And how does it feel to come into existence now that you've clung to the Mikaelson name at long last?" she analyzes. "You're not the only one hear who has ears."  
Elijah looks between us witches while he waits for his queue of violence.  
Aurora comments, "Dinner and a show. For an American Holiday, Thanksgiving has proved its worth."  
Jezebel cuts to the point of her entry, "You've done your research, but you haven't checked your safety net. The thing you stole from me could get your family killed, and I'm your only rescue. Where is it?"  
"In mint condition, obviously. I happen to know Tristan was waiting for it to be here tonight; he ransacked the DuBois Farmhouse looking for it. You're stubborn, you wouldn't hide it in plain sight, so I did it for you. More for my own cause. Give us the coordinates, and you get the vessel you're looking for," I address Lucien and Tristan.  
Jezebel doesn't react; she just makes it more complicated.  
"You're asking the wrong people," she chills our spines with her tone.  
She escalates the point of the entire evening. A paper flicks upward between her nimble fingers for Tristan to see.  
With a dead gaze, she says, "You shouldn't wear a blazer in eighty degrees. If you take it off, you can get pickpocketed at any given tourist hotspot."  
Aurora stands in alert.  
"You naughty girl," Tristan says without surprise.  
I try and take it from Jezebel when she isn't looking, but she sense my hand before it even moves, holding it to her opposite side.  
"You're too late to make threats. She's scheduled to be dropped in the Atlantic tonight!" Aurora blurts.  
My heart skips a beat. Jezebel smiles mischievously as everyone suddenly turns to Aurora. Elijah's face is turning a pale pink and Klaus's neck pulsates with stalled swallows.  
"The ocean!" Klaus growls, his chair jetting out behind him.  
Aurora is taken aback, like she didn't realize what she just told us was wrong.  
She frowns, "Nik! She's perfectly fine. I'm keeping her safe! No reason my sire shouldn't be trusted in my hands."  
I am not waiting any longer. I prepare to say a spell that brings her thoughts forward, muttering a simply incantation under my breath. I raise my electrically charged hand to Aurora, but Tristan is one step ahead of me. He thinks fast, acts quick for his sister's sake. He grabs me, holding me against him with a knife to my throat.  
"Harm my sister and I'll reciprocate," Tristan sneers in my ear.  
I don't fear. I see the way Jezebel looks at Tristan, the earthy hues of her irises fading to a devastating milky blue. His nose begins to bleed. He touches it calmly with a free hand. I begin to hear a strange buzzing near my ear. I turn my head just enough to see a brilliant, shiny black housefly ejecting itself off the rim of Tristan's nostril. It flies to its death in her grasp.  
"What are you doing?" Klaus demands.  
Tristan cries out in pain and drops the knife, nearly taking me to the floor with him. I hear Aurora and Lucien's cries, as well. All their hands are wrapped around their hair, trying to stop the involuntary action of snapping their own necks. Like clockwork, the twisting of their vertebrae sounds like three bottle caps popping in a row.  
Jezebel's white eyes return to one brilliant brown that speckles over into the bottom corner of her green eye. Elijah extends his clean handkerchief to Jezebel, whose nose also bleeds a brilliant red. She doesn't take it.  
"I'll make yours bleed the old-fashioned way if you don't take me to what belongs to me," she asserts.


	4. The Three Evils

**REBEKAH**

 _October 19_

"Kol!" Klaus roared within the brush.

As he stomped over diminutive trees and briars, I hauled my tired feet along with him. We'd been wandering after Kol for hours. I was starved and I wanted to be at home, where my beloved Emil swore he'd be waiting for me. He would have to wait behind a locked door for another hour if I were not to say something to turn Nik around.

"Don't hurt him for this! You're overthinking his wishes," I cried.

"Oh, he won't have time to feel pain this time, sister, I can make that certain. If that selfish mongrel wants to go against his own family for some lowly wench, so be it. He'll know what he's done!" brother yelled.

I was the only thing that could stand in Klaus's way of doing something rash—again. Ever since Kol returned from Spain, there had been a spinning dial in his system that kept time for his intended short visit. It was a record for him to have done that much damage in three days.

"He was looking for a girl, he said. Our energy is better spent combing her out, as well, don't you think? What if he's already given her the white oak? We'll not find Kol in one night alone!" I wanted to deter his rage.

Klaus tore my cupped hand away from his wrist, moving forward in the dark with the dying embers of his torch. Crickets and owls chirped in harmony, and little mammals skittered about on the leafy floor.

"He took all our white oak, Rebekah! Can you not think of the ways he plans to gain vengeance on us with the only thing that can kill us!" Klaus snapped at me.

"Keep your voice down, do you want others to hear our squabbling? They will be loose to start looking for him, too!" I retorted.

The glow of his torch only stretched so far, but it was efficient enough to distract me from my brother shouting in my face and the mud diving deep into my silk shoes.

"...Nik, look," I beseeched.

I pointed my index to the north, towards a profound slant which led down into a grove of tall bald cypresses. A prolix slice of the color white indicated a manmade structure or burial. As we drew closer, our fear was left abandoned where the white hue was indeed the substance of white oak. Standing side by side next to the atrocity, Klaus swayed with unease of what to do next.

"Why would he empty his pockets here? Of all places?" I quietly muttered.

"Why does he do anything?" Klaus snarled, "For some kind of game."

I stepped forward for a clearer glimpse, recoiling once I set my foot upon a velvety surface: a minute hand.

"Nik, there's someone under there," I insisted.

Quickly strutting towards the mound, he risked the burn that came with dusting the ash away from body.

"Kol?" he suspected aloud, his temper quickly returning to despair.

Although, Kol was not under that ashen grave, there was no relief that came with the sight.

Avoidant, Nik held his phosphorescent torch away from the discovery to capture the image of the body from a safe distance. The white oak drizzled away like sand to reveal the girl's bronzen juvenile features, as well as the nightshade values of her tresses.

"Who is she?" I lowered.

Klaus held out his ringed hand, demanding my handkerchief to safeguard his bare hands from the ash.

Unclothed, her arms and chest were crass and bewildering, covered in crusty and bloody symbols from a witchcraft ritual.

"I presume this is how we meet our brother's petit trésor," Klaus spoke.

I carefully bestowed my gloved fingertips on her throat. She wasn't breathing.

"Let's not hold her to such a candle that she would be Kol's taste. Perhaps, she was a threat," I moved arbitrarily.

Klaus stood, examining the setting around the three of us.

"Considering what close contact the girl is in with our stolen goods, I would not say otherwise. I've seen those symbols in our mother's grimoire… It's a symbol for revival or new life. Something—"

"Niklaus," I panicked, staring wide-eyed at the girl's pendant.

A loud shuffle came down from the trees. Swatting away the fiery pearls flew from his torch like dandelion dustings, Klaus lifted his torch to the skyscraping canopies above and froze.

There were five faces peering down at us, their bare bodies hidden behind the thinnest and most mobile branches. Seven faces. Eleven. Twelve. None of which were human-looking.

"Well, come on, then. Don't be cowards! Come down here and we can beget a fair game. Victor gets take his prize," Klaus enjoined, gesturing to the white oak.

Shuddering, I drew away from the body as the creatures shuffled and jumped down and away from their hiding places. Thinking quickly, I watched as Klaus's arm swung out behind him and threw our torch onto the altar comprised of ash and corpse.

"Nik!" I scolded.

I marked the monstrous glow of his yellow eyes in the pitch navy of fading twilight, his breath wild with exasperation as he hurriedly went to pick a victim. He caught but one. It was an older woman from the looks of her lower, bare half. Her human head was covered by that of livestock's, its eyes gouged to make room for her own. The repugnant disguise did not suspend Nik. I listened to him sniveling and howling and growling on the ground above the grove as he tore away at her throat. He tore the bloody mask from her head and dragged her by the hair, towards the light of his bonfire when he was done.

Her head hit the crunchy floor with a heavy thud. Her wide white eyes and wrinkled face were horrifically telling of some kind of disease. The veins in her face formed symbols of sin and of hatred.

The utterly appalled brother reached his hand forward when he was convinced we were no longer being observed. He touched his handiwork, searching for the luxurious texture of ripped skin and miry blood. It didn't exist. Like a broken china plate, his bite mark had calcified into a crushed glass texture and crumbled inward. Half her face had broken in fragments by the time we retreated.

 **JEZEBEL**

It was like being stuck in sleep. My eyes were open and stalwartly sore, but it didn't fix the dark. My arms couldn't lift to wipe them free of obstruction. I breathed and choked on the grainy darkness. The same darkness muffled all noise.

I did my best to lean on my tightly compacted forearms and work upward against the restrictive, itchy blackness until silver peaked through like a torn gift box. The cold dawn burned my arms and legs like pieces of weightless paper. My nails dug into the damp mud once past the den of ground worms and beetles dancing around my buried head. I caught my breath and expelled the dirty saliva from my mouth laying flat on the foreign soil, half my body still tethered to the earth's core.

I tried to call out for my father, but the words could hardly get out. I looked around, shaking in unfamiliarity of the swamp-like setting and the lack of commodities. I recognized nothing; not even the reflection in the post-rain buildup beside me. No clothes, no family, no sign of commodities. I hadn't a single feeling or lead on what was going to happen to me or what already had.

My weak head hit the ground in line with my torso just as a small starling bird landed on its clawed toes right beside me. Worry glazed in my satin eyes as I listened to it chatter with its friends freely. There's something to be said about the deepness of the damage one feels when a tiny little bird makes them feel nonexistent.

My cheek was pricked with a cold drop of precipitation that didn't match my tears. It would rain again soon. Trembling, I pulled myself completely out of my grave, my uncut hair still tethered to the sharp twigs stuck in the earth. Sun-kissed arms covering my undress, I got to my feet and stepped forward noiselessly on numb feet.

Who could have thought me dead, and if that was not the intent, then what was? Where was I? What would I do if I could not get home?

I coughed, attempting to rid my lungs of the last of the loam caught in my system. My aggravated choking caused something more than dirt to leave me. I was barely a yard from where I'd lain undead when I fell back to my knees and started to lose air. My fingers quickly swam up into my mouth and removed the piecing from my throat. In a bloodied bundle of unknown things, a silver bullet peeked from my dispel.

I knew what it was, but I had no time to register what it could have meant. I started losing consciousness all over again.

I tried to crawl like a decrepit animal as an upheaval of blood followed the bullet.

A hand swam around the front of my throat and pulled me backward until I was confined to the floor on my back by several sets of hands. Too tired to fight and afraid my sanity might have been gone, I watched as the creatures stared down at me, one of them raising a knife over my heart.

"Stop," a disembodied voice called. "Not yet."

A fully human woman stepped forth, gazing down at me warmly.

"We kill them all at once or not at all. Once Carmila is found—"

"Carmila will kill _us_ if we spare her!" one coyote-headed creature objected in a scratchy voice.

The woman retaliated by ripping the corpse head of the beast off the bloody female's face.

"I do not fear her and neither should you. She's become a joke, a myth since she left us behind. This girl is proof that we will prosper far more quickly than any branch of our family tree. Once we have the Mikaelson brothers, we will have every ingredient we need to get rid of her. Do you want to live by her rules, her immortality for the rest of your lives!" the woman with a Jamaican accent cries without looking away from me.

I stare up at her all the same, recovering from a racing heart and my lack of direction. With the amount of vulnerabilities I'd already displayed, and guessing I'd already been their prey once before, I did what I knew.

My eyes went to a big black tree, whose canopy I could see behind the woman's ringlets and menacing face.

 _Save me_ , I thought. Just as I knew it would, a starling flew at the woman's head. She ducked. The coyote, the elk twins, the pig, and the donkey removed their heads. Two more of the starlings began to fly off the branches, followed by their entire family.

While they were distracted, I ran in the opposite direction with every last bit of energy I had. The hilly terrain could have stumbled me several times, if not scraping, stabbing, and slamming my body with all its materials.

I slid on my bare feet into the beginnings of a body of dark, murky water. I did not know what was inside, but I was willing to swim it if it would put me far from that cult of devils. My father would rather find me alive with water-ridden disease than dead at the hands of those freaks.

I swam outward, trying to remember the day when my brothers taught me to swim against a current, though the water was still as the metallic sky above. There would be other days such as those, I promised myself. _Just remember_. Just pretend that he is here and if you don't get across this water, he's going to brag about it all day long.

I stopped at the center of the dark water, catching my breath and for stalkers, but I saw nothing. I heard nothing. The trees surrounding this open channel were too dense to see through.

My ankle grazed a soft and clammy life form, which only then applied pressure and a knot around my leg when I kicked it away.

Echoes and bird soundtracks cut off as the salty water filled my lungs on a delayed inhale.

 **CELESTE**

She flailed in the tub like a full-bodied fish before she realized should was able to grab the tin edges and lift herself out of my transport spell.

" _Apartáte de mí_!" She shouted as my resting arm budges from behind my back.

Calmly, I paused and let her have her moment. She nearly slipped on the uneven tiles of the washroom scrambling out of the tub, looking around for my fellow pythons.

"Calm yourself. I'm not going to hurt you. I just saved your life," I reminded her.

She snatched away the red robe I extended to her as if it were a cruel joke.

"Saved my life? _You_ brought me to this place, I just heard you admit it was for your murderous gain! Where am I supposed to say that I am? What's happening to me—"

She cut herself off with a terminal hacking that resulted in an outbreak of blood on the floor.

"You were injured and endangered as you were. I had to save you, it was my duty," I intoned. "You're my proof, you see. That your mother could not kill her bastard child, and that my premonitions were applicable! You will kill Carmila, or you will help me replace her," I explained myself.

" _Jodidamente Loca!_ " she cried as she covered herself up. "Let me out of here!"

"Nothing is stopping you from walking out of here. Just know the mistake you are making. You stand in a land you do not know, full of people who will protest your presence the second you walk those streets...in a simple sheet of all things," I scoffed.

" _No me confundas con alguien que se preocupa por las expectativas de otras personas_!" She hissed and marched past me.

How contradictory, for she was meeting my expectations as of that moment. I heard her pulling on the front door's handles, unable to get out even as she tried to break its romantic decorative stain glass with her naked fist.

"You don't mind if I hold onto this," I spoke, leaning on the framed mouth of the halls.

I rose the weathered brass pendant of her family crest to eye level.

"Your father gave it to you for this specific reason, no? Should you ever be without him, it would protect you, yes? You will not suffer the abandonment of a simple necklace; you will suffer because you still don't know what you need to be protected from," I threatened.

"A very smart guess would be that you are what I need protecting from. So, you hunt me down? I would not be brave to make that fulmination," she stuttered.

I mused, "People want you dead, Jezebel, like your own mother. That's why I'm here. There's been a stunt in your growth because of the chaotic life you've led… Your father wanted you so desperately to be a wolf. He might as well have forced you to bloodlet your magic. As if it were that simple."

She shook her head with disbelief at my story's prelude.

"You don't know my father. Or my mother. Or me!" she protested.

"And that goes to say that you do?" I settled. "You pretend it's all a coincidence but you know full well who and what you were born unto."

She retorted, "I have heard enough of what you know. You will prove it to me or you have...have nothing—"

Her eyes rolled upward as she tired fell to the floor in magical exhaustion. She bled from the corners of her eyes in the center of the sun's shadow, little red buds beginning to sprout from the bloodied and wet floorboards. Kneeling down, I plucked one of the infant flowers from its stem.

 **JEZEBEL**

 _October 21_

I might have escaped my vows to a God I had yet to earn a response from, but everything I knew about him that created the heart inside me was about to be tested by the Devil Herself. In these hard times, every person of faith I'd ever heard of had gotten a visit from Santa María or Christ himself. I'd lost my belief in what I was forced to learn. My divine intervention was empty of a God; all I saw was me.

She had her bronzen glow back, her hair groomed like a black lion's mane, eyes bright and full of tragically-earned wisdom; leaning back against the wooden desk next to my head while I lied still under a wool blanket on the floor.

"What are you doing?" She questioned. "Are you really just going to lay there like a boulder and accept it?"

"I try for hours to break the locked door, I will not go anywhere until I know Papá is coming," I promised the reflection.

Her tall high heels clicked on the wooden floors as she re-crossed her ankles, her silhouette absorbed the outside silver daylight.

"If he doesn't? What then? Sit here and die, waiting for someone to send an angel... Seems pointless, doesn't it? You could snap your fingers and disappear if you wanted to. Thank your mother for that," she purred in a perfected English language.

I sat up from my manmade bed on the floor next to the uncomfortable bed beside me, aggravated by the unwanted figment of my imagination. She was already gone.

I was always aware that there were little things I was able to do that no one else could. I did not grow up in a place where witches or vampires were accepted; I didn't have room to accept that moving things a few feet from their place without touching them or small visions in broad daylight were common.

If I had once had the sense to pursue my abilities prior to this, maybe the hexed bedroom door would have been a lot less of a barrier.

I drifted to sleep, eventually. My eyes snapped open from a glued together sensation. There was thumping, something making the floorboards under my pillow vibrate wildly. I rose from the blankets, putting my hand in place of the small pillow. It continued in distinct patterns. Maybe there was a rodent or a snake beneath my bedroom, looking for a way out. As I put my head down for a distinguishing sound, I was startled when the thump became a heavy bang that tapped pulled on the floorboard from the middle.

I tried my doorknob again, banging my fist against it with frigid protest of my captivity. As the last six hours proved, Celeste was not going to let me out any time soon.

" _Cabrona_ ," I swore under my breath.

For the third time, I picked up the disheveled vanity chair in the room and threw it at the large glass window. It cracked and then magically repaired itself seconds later.

The incessant banging sound continued where I was quickly delivered to the edge of my patience.

I pulled the blankets away from my sleeping spot and used a loose chair pin to drive up one of the incomplete floorboards with insect holes.

I brought my face closer for a better view and saw in a noticeable amount of natural light that there was a chair mounted to the ceiling of the house foundation. It looked like a way out or a nasty trick.

With a new gripping point, I took up two more boards and made myself a rabbit hole. No matter the crushing squeeze of my corset to my upper half didn't do much to help the cause, but I didn't want to risk making the cavity any more noticeable.

I put my legs through first and gave myself a start when my knees magnetized to the ceiling itself. Gravity converted itself wherever I was to end up. Pushing against the surface floor, I ended up on an identical wooden ceiling. A chair, a table and a window imitated the room I'd just come from.

I stared at the window hopefully and puzzled; I'd just come from a place of nightfall, yet the view outside spoke of the red and orange dawn with its dew and tree shadows crashing against the inside walls.

"...Who's there?" a worried masculine voice demanded.

I rotated onto my tailbone to face the unexpected voice. There, not leaning against or chained to the wall but _nailed_ to it was the source of the rancid smell in the air.

"Have you finally come to finish me off?" he scoffed, "You're no closer to a victory than Carmila was. I wish you the same hell you've brought me, whatever your method."

"How long have you stayed down here?" was my first question.

His eyes fell right past me as I came closer as though he didn't see me coming.

"...Ana?" the brown-haired prisoner said worriedly.

I looked toward the window, torn between freeing him and making my escape. If he couldn't see me, perhaps, he wouldn't be able to blame me later if we both survived. I picked up the nearby chair prepared to throw it.

"Don't!" he sensed. "It's charmed. You'll burst into flame."

"I am not a vampire," I frowned.

"It doesn't matter," he pleaded. "You need to get out of here."

Confused, I reflected, "I could free you and you ask me to go?"

"There's a reason she brought you here. You're not meant to escape. Listen to me. Do what she tells you, and when the opportunity presents itself...find Klaus Mikaelson. Tell him Kol is here—"

I was pulling at the splintery nails in his feet when I heard a slam. I pressed myself against the wall next to Kol.

Celeste appeared from a concealed doorway in the adjacent wall, crossing the small threshold as though she had called a congenial meeting.

"He can't see you. Very quickly, he won't be able to hear you or speak to you, either," Celeste stated.

I commanded, "You need to let him go."

"Under what pretense? Do you know?" Celeste taunted.

"This is cruel and unusual and it is unsafe," I barked.

She picked up a sharp collar-shaped object, examining it in the light.

"That's the mannerism of having power, Jezebel. Playing nicely is of a fictional routine to making something of yourself. There is no room for negotiation or ultimatums—only force," Celeste unfairly reasoned.

I grabbed her arm that held the torture device, but she pushed me off with fierce displeasure.

"Shall I put this on you or him? I'm happy to leave you down here and revoke your privileges," Celeste barked at me.

Hopeless and letting go of her, I knew Kol had spoke truth. I was to take care of myself first.

"Don't fear her. You are stronger than her—"

The inward blades of the collar made his neck singe and throat bleed. I couldn't look.

Celeste sighed like an anchor had been lifted from her shoulders.

"Now. I'm sure you'd like something to eat," Celeste smiled.

 **CELESTE**

Her eyes looked like glass ornaments the longer she withheld the tale of the pain she'd witnessed. Her first tear fell when I put a plate of a raw pancreas in front of her, her mouth scrounging for the words to decline or to speak over her terror.

"There's no need to be afraid. You're safe here so long as you comply," I reminded her.

"I do not want your protection," she asserted.

After all she'd been through in the last day, she continued to believe I was there for her preservation. It was laughable.

I ridiculed her, "Protection? Don't be daft. I may need you alive, but it's a temporary requirement. The only protection you need is your own. I'm going to show you how."

"What do you achieve from forcing magic on me? If I could use it against you," she sniveled.

I sat across from her.

"It sounds like you're asking me for the truth. Here it is. Your mother did not abandon you. You were a threat to her name and she wished you gone. However, you were stronger than her since the minute of your birth. You managed to survive and your father fled with you in his arms. I knew he couldn't be trusted to put you down his self, and the ever-present theory that you lived remained within me. I was right, as you can see. Carmila is very much alive, she doesn't retain this knowledge. Which makes you one of the four most deadly creatures on the planet," I reminisced.

Her cheeks and nose were red with melancholy and utter shock. I took a drink of my afternoon tea as I watched her chest heave.

I continued, "You will help me replace Carmila, but should I perish before hand, you'll be what kills her. I deliver you to greatness, and the Hive is free of your mother's toxic law and order. All I need is Klaus Mikaelson. With his brother Elijah wrapped around my finger and his smaller brother 'missing', he's about to tumble like a castle of rock. I should have him in less than a month."

As I spoke, I admired the glittering ring on my left hand that sat against the porcelain of my teacup. It was the prize of a king's weakness and nothing could touch it.

"You have not agreed Elijah would find out when you step away? Or do you fantasize to keep your legs open long enough and it will disturb his every thought?" Jezebel bullied me.

I licked a loose drop of hibiscus off my lip, smiling at her uneven tenses.

"If you knew even the sliver of what it means to be in New Orleans, you wouldn't blame me," I smiled. "Eat. And you'll soon see swallowing gets easier when it saves your life. You won't be so quick to judge me."

" _Vete a la mierda_ ," she muttered, "You can act like an animal all you wish, I will not fall to your level."

"It's not for your enjoyment. It's for your health. Resurrection is a tricky game that we happen to be masterful at. If the flesh of man is not devoured, yours will turn to bile, mud, and decay," I corrected.

She paused, her glassy eyes leaving behind a pinkened nose and cheeks, but not a sliver of passivity.

"I've not died," she sought confirmation. "Celeste."

I wasn't leaving it open for conversation. I teleported to her side, grabbing the hair atop her resistant head. Using my ringed hand, I pull the fattest piece away from the dish and shove it down her throat with sharp fingernails.

"You're a long way from understanding. As am I. But it doesn't matter. I found you," I whispered violently.

She did not complain or cry out, but she whined at the forceful taste of bile meeting in the middle of her throat. I felt her teeth bite down nervously on my knuckles.


	5. Cat's Cradle

**FREYA**

I feel Jezebel staring at me intently as the seconds pass us all by in the room.  
"Is this the part where you turn me into a toad?" I sarcastically question.  
She says, "Do any of you have a sincere idea as to what you were agreeing to?"  
Elijah comments, "I imagine we're about to get an earful, nonetheless."  
Jezebel replies, "The vessel you were so prepared to trade off to your sires could have gave them complete power over you. Once they bind your soul to it, everyone's in charge except you. You'd be at Tristan's mercy. He's not going to let you escape him then. Or is that what you were going for?"  
"What's your excuse?" I scoff.  
"I'm very good at the game of survival and adaption. I made it work. But I'm not the one who almost signed their soul over without asking for the contract. I know more about what's going on here than you do. If you wanted to argue with me, I would save your breath," Jezebel warns.  
"Freya," Elijah sighs, approaching from behind. "Don't provoke unless provoked. As it sounds, Jezebel has something to say. Though I won't hold my breath it will be accurate information."  
"Oh, it's a little more complicated than that," Jezebel assures him.  
Klaus walks out of the main house and approaches our tense little circle.  
"They're both awake. It's about time we begin our round of good and bad cop. Jezebel, now would be a good time—"  
"I'm not leaving. I don't trust any of you for one fucking second, especially, when it comes to that vinyl which is still not in my hands," Jezebel interrupts Klaus.  
He tests her, "With that attitude, you may have to earn it. You're a witch. What-say you go and take my sister's location from one of their twisted little minds?"  
"I'm not here to hold hands with you just because you lost track of your sister. One of you voluntarily browsed my private possessions, took what you needed to compromise with the De Martel family and considered me to be okay with it. I was wronged and I want redress. You could have traded them my life exactly. You told me I am meddling in your business, but that is just your family code for 'blaming the victim'," Jezebel scolds him. "I'll let it go. Because I am going to go through your shit and find it myself. Then, we will be even. _Chúpame la pija._ "  
Niklaus lets her do as she wills, turning back to Elijah with an aggressive grin on his face.  
"Well, that did not sound very nice. Now, thanks to you I have two angry women on my hands," he says to me.  
"I did what I thought was right. Besides, she deserves a little hardship. She enjoys the title of a victim, but not the rights," I huff.

 **AURORA**

Jezebel is shuffling through the room when I wake, like a child looking for its presents.  
"I hope you're happy with yourself," I mumble, swatting away the smell of sage.  
"No, but with your prayers, I'll get there someday," she answers, continuing to angrily open and shut the dresser drawers.  
Getting to my feet, I sit properly in the armchair across the room.  
"Still haven't found your precious record?" I taunt her, "You know, I could help you look."  
Jezebel inhales calmly, putting a hold on her rummaging.  
"Let's not offer anything you can't give," she answers.  
"Oh? But I can. I watched her hide it," I smile, "and I've got to say, you're not giving them much credit."  
Gracefully standing up straight, she turns her full attention to me, her perfect head of colossal waves falling backward like streamers in a storm.  
She must not remember the story of the fisherman and the 'ifrit. When the fisherman released the genie from an urn at the bottom of the lake, the genie swore that no matter what the poor man did, he would die for letting him free. And so, the fisherman tricked the genie back into urn by complaining about its size and tossed him back into the disgusting and still waters. The question is if I can get the genie back into her bottle this time.  
"Really?" Jezebel purrs.  
"Oh, indeed. Think about what's in plain sight, Jezebel. I know you weren't born a fool," I grin.  
Just then, Nik's estranged older sister enters the room. Gripping her face, Jezebel presses her mouth to Freya's with a brute yet enticing force. I could feel the ardor she put into such actions from where I sat. Freya spat blood at the floor, falling forward and onto the speckled Moroccan rug.  
Jezebel licked her lips, rolling her neck and picking up her taloned fingertips to wipe her mouth.  
"...She gave it to Elijah for safety," she foretells.  
Going along with it, I reply, "Elijah! Only he would think to hide it in a place he best remembers. The oldest room in the house..."  
Jezebel turns back to me, her eyes vengeful and bright, pupils dilating in and out of an eclipsing black pupil. She'd resemble a cat on a dark road if she'd dare step in front of a speeding truck any time soon.  
"I don't believe I asked for your help," she speaks.  
She grabs at the root of my hair gently and tugs once, unleashing a chunk of my hair.  
"What do you think you're doing!" I scoff.  
Running her delicate fingers over it once, it quickly turns into a red ribbon. She paces around me in my chair, knotting the ends into a complete circle.  
"Do you play cat's cradle?" she asks me.  
I haven't played a game of cat's cradle since I was a girl. Tristan taught it to me, I taught it to Rebekah, and so forth. My mind jumps around to the various times when I was bored in summer and playing it atop the hills near our mansion.  
"Aren't you a little old to be playing those games?" I scoff.  
"Well, I like to keep my hands busy. But back in the old days, it wasn't played for fun. It was played because it was an excellent way to get the truth out of someone," she sighs.  
I count the twirls and twists of her fingers.  
One. A shooting pain goes up my back.  
Two. I let out a louder yawn of pain, falling from my chair.  
I haven't felt pain in centuries. It kind of tickles!  
Three, my arm twists all the way around.  
"What are you doing!" I grunt.  
Jezebel halts her hands, legs crossed and shoulders back as if we're enrolled in a civilized discourse.  
Four. The pain intensifies into something more of a pinch. A grab. A slice.  
I blink and she's reached her final tug of the shape. I stare at the ruby red spider's web above my face, and the pentagram at the center of it.  
I come up to unravel it and burst through, but the twine slices through the skin of my cheek and burns my flesh.  
"Gah! Jezebel! Let me out!" I scream.  
She stands among the twine bedroom, looking down at me.  
Her ringed pinkie jumps over the string around her ring finger and hovers there. I feel the twine closing in on me. I am cut into like fresh meat, two inches deep.  
" _Mph_! Fifteen! Fifteen degrees West!" I shout uncontrollably.  
Jezebel unravels the string and the magical twine all around us burns into thin air. Jezebel hands me a nearby handkerchief to wipe my bloody face with. Saying nothing, she watches me stand and ready to pounce. Testing my patience, she puts my messy hair behind my ears and slides them down to my neck.  
"Was that so hard?" she whispers.  
"How did— What did you do to me!" I cry.  
Jezebel explains, "I said it was a game of truth. It just wasn't the truth I was looking for."  
I eject the nearby letter opener from its fabric hyde and put it to her throat, backing her into the wall.  
Smiling, I remind her, "Anybody can make up a number, darling. So, you have only one coordinate. It's no worry to me. You'll spend an eternity just guessing where—"  
Without looking, she unravels Tristan's coordinate and raises it upward for me to see. It's a paper of brilliant creme color, not a single word scribbled upon it.  
That sneaky little thing.  
"Sometimes, magic is optional. People will admit to anything with the right pressure points," she points out.  
I spit at her with irritated arousal, "I knew there was a reason you once stole my heart; you're still an inscrutable, humble scam."  
"Aurora, you know what you did was wrong the second you decided on it. And frankly, it's not the key to Niklaus's heart. Rebekah is safe where she has numbers, not in the hands of a girl who yells at her reflection for staring back," Jezebel belittles me.  
"Because you would know what the key to Niklaus's heart is," I growl enviously.  
She narrows her eyes calmly, teasing me, "You would never guess. It's very strange and very transgressive."  
I attempt to strike her with the letter opener only to have her catch the blade in her grip. In an intense struggle, she begins to turn the blade on me, her palm bleeding like a river and her face as straight as a ruler.  
"Be as ambiguous as you'd like, _mon chèr_ , but there is nothing unbeknownst to me in this house. I've known you, I've been there with you as I have Nik. You have been mad about him for centuries to the point of no return. But you'd never come forward about it...because this sireline war is of your making. You did this!" I howl at her. "And now you're here to try your luck!"  
Jezebel quietly proceeds, "Oh, please, go ahead and kill me. I'm the most important ingredient. You kill me and everyone pays. At least, then there won't be a sireline war to talk about because everyone will be dead!"  
A wave of heat leaves her and crashes through me, flooding into Freya's blocked throat. Jezebel doubles over for a moment, her eyes and nails returning to human phase. Two strings of blood drip from her cornea beds, her tattooed right hand wiping them away delicately. Freya's missing energy seems to have been restored. Freya sits up on her forearm, one hand over the side of her head. She must have landed sideways when Jezebel gave her the kiss of devils.  
Jezebel's lethargic exhale releases as she takes the blade from me which I've withdrawn.  
She whispers to me before she storms away, "One will fall by friend, by family, and by foe. It isn't an omen for the Mikaelsons. It's an omen for the Knot! And they will do whatever it takes to stop the creation from destroying the creator. By all means, stay and lend a hand. The only thing Klaus wants from you is a human shield."

 **ELIJAH**

I'm standing on the overhead railings of the Abattoir when Jezebel emerges from the room where Aurora has been detained. There's a pause in her step when she notices the large "M" imprinted on a pillar nearby. Given her past exhibition of unpredictability, her thoughts take her somewhere else when the right cord is struck. That crest is a catalyst for colorful ideas.

Tristan must finally be out of relevant information. Klaus leaves his spot of detainment and approached Jezebel, unhappy to see him without a bargaining piece.

"No such luck?" he intones as his hands lace behind his back.  
She extends to him a paper with a number written across it.

"Take it," Jezebel says.

I can't see my brother's expressions, but I know how he appreciates chaotic antics such as this. I imagine the way he used to lay his eyes on her, with a slight longing and disguised pity.

Klaus remarks, "For the record, I didn't tell Freya to—"

She interrupts, "You know how fast I can change my mind. Nothing permanent has happened. Yet. I won't goad you over it."

He continues, "You aided Marcellus and you managed to keep my sister from an Atlantic prison. You've given us an advantage. I suppose you're next step is to remind me that I owe you."

She scoffs, "You don't have anything that I want."

I know my brother and he's about to make himself look a fool.

His attention is still fixed on her as I round the corner of the railings just to see his disappointed gaze. I have to stop meddling.

I start walking back into the room where Tristan sits unconscious and bound to one of our fine Victorian chairs. My original thoughts were to interrogate him about the cargo ship where Rebekah's body lies, but I have come up with a new round of questioning in the last five minutes.  
Freya is wiping her mouth of blood as she prepares for his awakening.  
"Next time, I'm going to wear body armor walking into the same room as your ex-girlfriends," she briefly explains.  
"What did she do to you? Did you tell her where I hid the vessel?" I question.  
"All she did was take a little energy. It didn't last her long, but for me, it's still taking a toll," she briefly says. "No matter. She did some chaotic good with it. She has the coordinates now."  
Cutting to it, Tristan wakes with the scent of burning sage that crunches in Freya's grasp. His eyes open and his breath quickens; he looks horrified. He's trying to speak it sounds like, but he's only wriggling in his seat and humming.

"It's a side effect of her magic. It must have triggered the venom still in his system," Freya notifies me.

We choose to let him have his episode. Within a minute or so, he is left with a simply traumatized expression.

"I do enjoy knowing a most merciless witch is out to get you," I smile.

 **KLAUS**

It had to be brought up sometime, when we would stop being familiar strangers and start being a failed romance.

Stepping towards her, I purr, "If there's nothing I have that you desire, then why are you lingering here in my city?"

She folds her arms as though she prepared to hear the question a second or tenth time. I lean over one of her shoulders when she refuses to respond to my interrogating stroll around her perimeter.

"I know for fact you swore you'd never come back to this place if it were an option. So, what other reason do you have to stay—besides me?" I tempt her.

Jezebel closes her blue-vein eyelids and puts her incarnadine lips together, unimpressed. She stops my imposing closeness with a firm forearm to my chest. Her forearm rebounds back to her side after a soft push on my dress shirt.

Jezebel states, "I can practically taste the paranoia. Trying to romance and gamble the hard feelings away in every potential threat you come across is a cheap trick."  
She's one to talk. There would be no hard feelings had there been less secrecy between us. She was scared of my kin once and it drove a stake between us.  
Unable to restrain myself, I inhale deeply Jezebel's scent of sandalwood, my hand intimidatingly grazing the side of her olive neck to move her satin hair back. My memory serves me well that she would reject any sort of human contact with me as she takes a step away.  
"If a fifth of the population is split between cruel and compassionate, then the rest can be swayed in either direction. I'd say I have created my own workable technique under those circumstances. It has proved compatible with very simple minds such as yours to the most complex—Aurora's. But make no mistake, I haven't the heart to take either lost causes in," I mutter to her.  
Jezebel scoffs, "Swayed is another word for 'forced.' Not everyone wants to be cruel or to be compassionate. Compassion may dominate Aurora's heart right now, but what happens when it comes time to protect her sire? Or Tristan's? She doesn't want to hurt you, but she will to save herself. No one's story is any different than that."  
I'm about to rebuttal her observation when Freya bursts in, seeming apologetic and slightly agitated.  
"I can't find the vinyl. It's gone. I've looked everywhere," Freya pants.  
Jezebel cranes her head back, preserving a neutral countenance. There's a moment where I think she may actually do something rash until the silence in the air pulls on her ear. Exposing the doom she has every intention of making me feel, she turns her gaze toward me.  
"Why can't I sense her?" softly and frozen in tone, she demands.  
Aurora. We've left her alone for too long.  
"She wouldn't have taken it, she's far too focused—"  
Jezebel doesn't wait for me to finish. She rips open the doors on the downstairs guest bedroom, allowing us to get a better look at Aurora's overturned chair and the connecting door to the dining room completely destroyed.

 **ELIJAH**

"I can't tell you anything. I just can't. My chest... It feels like resting regurgitation of maggots and arachnids. She's preventing me from telling you anything I know," Tristan pants.

"I can't break through Jezebel's venom. I can probably create a loophole for myself, but...it's too much of a risk with magic older than our mother's. Old magic is draining and dissociating and infecting once in a person's mind or mouth. There's a chance I could interrupt something that's not to be disturbed," Freya says frustratedly from across the room.

I rub my eyelids.

"You have what you want. You found Rebekah. Just let me go so this can be over and done with," Tristan asks of me.

I sit in front of Tristan, leaning inward.  
"Yes, but you see, I don't. It is imperative that you confess what you know. Why is Jezebel important to the Strix?" I growl at him.

Tristan shakes, his eyes clamped shut while he opens his mouth to say something. "I do believe this was up for discussion at dinner, Elijah. Or had you not been listening!"  
As true as it could be, I knew that wasn't all. Vengeance would be eliminating the Zhukov pack for good, including distant blood. Why would he let Jezebel wander on the fence between prisoner and foe otherwise? Why not bring her up all these years?  
"She wreaks havoc on this city because you took the last step in turning her into a monster," Tristan continues to taunt me.  
Freya stares at me in confusion.  
I point my vervain weapon in his face, admonishing, "Hold your tongue filled with threats and answer me."  
Tristan begins, "A deal was made! Aurora and I...we struck a deal with someone...a coven. We must bring Klaus Mikaelson to them in exchange for the Serratura. A weapon...that would protect our sires from one another or further harm."  
He would sacrifice Lucien's sireline for the sake of his own. Unsurprising. I imagine he has yet to hear of this exact story.  
He continues, "...Jezebel was on the Serratura when we had a moment alone with it. She'd escaped with the will to protect Klaus. But she knew something more than what the coven told us. They didn't just want Klaus...they wanted the youngest Mikaelson—whoever was left! For what, I still don't know. I wanted...to protect my family; I chose to trust Jezebel and walk away. When Aurora had the vinyl made for Jezebel, things became to risky and complicated between us and our rescue! We wanted to bargain her away for the Serratura and then flee! But she was too powerful to handle and we knew repercussion was the same as not reutnring her at all. I had her sent away and hidden. If I didn't know where she was...no one would. That's all I can tell you."  
"Who was in this coven, Tristan?" I demand.

He goes into another violent episode via his poisoned mindset, repeatedly murmuring, "The Knot. The Knot—"  
"The Knot?" Freya speaks, glancing at me for guidance.  
The episode is over within the next few moments. Tristan's levels of pride and serenity diminish as he withers like a flower.  
"I've heard it before...that word," I state quietly. "Not to say I remember the definition."

"What's next, charades? While you guys host the world's most messed-up game night, you got bigger problems," Marcel announces himself.

He strolls into the room as proudly as Niklaus would.

I drop my exhale like a weight as I wave off Marcellus. "Freya, would you mind dealing with this situation, please?"

"Oh, no offense to your lovely sister, but you and I need to talk. I'm here on behalf of The Strix, and I'm not leaving without Tristan," Marcel notes.

I waltz out into the hallway, dragging Marcel behind me out into the corridors of the Abattoir.

"Elijah, look. The way I see it, you don't have a choice," he begins.

I remark, "Is that so?"

Marcel pauses. "How long before The Strix decide to come get their guy? And if they destroy half the quarter in the process..."

"I can handle the Strix," Briskly, I rejoin.

He pushes, "Oh, you can't even handle Tristan. He's caught in some seizure loop that girl put him in and the only thing that you can get out of him is...a bunch of words that tell you nothing about what's happening. The guy has been around for a millennium. He can withstand all your vampire mind games, and if you end up killing him, we lose Rebekah for good."

I interrogate, "So what are you suggesting here, Marcel, I simply hand over this wretched fiend and stand idly by as you set him free?"

"If I take Tristan, make it look like I busted him out, I get in tighter with him and The Strix. I can find out whatever you want me to and keep them from declaring war on the quarter if you trust me," Marcel coaxes.

I step past him, overlapping, "I will not release that filth!"

Darkness overcomes me for more than two minutes, however, my eyes welcome nightfall when I wake up. I am stiff from the floor. I feel my forced lungs sucking in air like a vacuum. I am dehydrated, enduring the slow pressure and burn of oxygen on my stab wound. Jezebel is crouching beside me expectantly. She's holding a stake in her left hand. My gaze drifts to the empty chair where Tristan once sat and Freya barely waking up across the room on the carpet.  
I remember Marcel's quick attack, his quick rescue of Tristan and his quiet word of returning for me. He didn't use a dagger or white oak stake, thankfully. Klaus appears from behind Jezebel, who smiles down at me violently.  
Jezebel greets me, "Change in plans?"

 **MARCEL**

"You have proven to be quite helpful Marcel. You have my gratitude," Tristan tells me.  
"I wouldn't thank me yet... You're sure taking a lot of hits from the Pythoness," I reply.  
No one says anything, Aya grabbing Tristan's coat as he carefully stands up.  
"We should go. Marcel, we'll be in touch," Aya says brusquely.  
I feel a surge of frustration fall over me. I've felt it every time the Strix has reached out to me for a favor. It's been limited, but to feel the desire to lash out this early, it's incredible.  
"Wait, hold up. So that's it?" I scoff. "You come into my house, threaten me, and ask me to declare war on the most dangerous vampires in the world. Which doesn't make sense to me! It seems like the new girl in town is your biggest problem!"  
Tristan rolls up his sleeves, coming back toward me.  
"I see. So you expected something more," he recognizes.  
I continue to rant, "Damn right. You talk a lot about my loyalty to the Strix, what about vice versa! I'm a marked man."  
"I assure you, we will be initiating good on—"  
"No. None of that," I interrupt Aya. "You need me on your side. But if it's a friend you need, I'm not gonna be there next time."  
Aya is about to lunge at me, the immediate hunger in her eyes when Tristan grabs her arm.

"You have earned something, indeed, Marcel. You are correct. Come with us," He says.  
He nods his head toward my front door, and Aya is left with her foot in her mouth. She's unsure about that decision. Gleeful to see it, I grant her a big smile when I pass her by.

 **KLAUS**

Jezebel ignores the cup of scotch I set in front of her.  
She swears, "I won't use detail. If Aurora destroys it, I'm going to die."  
Her eyes dart from Elijah's to mine. I stand between the couches in front of our coffee table while I bring my morning drink to my lips. Elijah watches our guest in confusion for a brief moment of time.  
"You described the object vaguely, claiming it was us 'handing over your life to the Strix'. How do you mean?" Elijah ponders.  
"My spirit is separated from my human body. It's been that way since I allegedly passed," she summarizes, eyes wandering towards Elijah. "It allows me to keep a physical presence on this plane even if I'm gone. If this one gets destroyed, I can't makea new one. My human body is what holds the majority of my powers, that's why I had to take energy from Freya. And I don't know what happened it—it's a part of the reason I stayed when Marcel let me go. Someone needs to take the record from Aurora before she goes through another mood swing and snaps it in half," Jezebel explains.  
"Our own genie in a bottle," I smirk.  
She grits her teeth in annoyance without looking at me.  
"If you can't make a new one, who put you on the vinyl?" Elijah asks.  
"Celeste had an object called the Serratura that she kept me alive on until I proved my potential. Tristan helped me escape it sometime later, and Aurora made the vinyl just to hold me captive," Jezebel replies.  
Elijah then begins for her, "And normally, you would go and retrieve it yourself, but...?" Elijah begins for her.  
"The vessel is cloaked," she tells him with a hint of accusation. "Every second I'm off that thing, I meet someone new who wants to get rid of me. Why wouldn't I?"  
There is a rising hostility between Jezebel and Elijah, in which I am not entirely present to them. Here, I thought they were more or less simple acquaintances.  
"Well, if you are in need of a rescue, there is a price to pay, of course. You'll have to play the role of our snake in the grass, pardon the innuendo," Elijah tells her.  
She rolls her eyes in disenchantment. It brings a smug smile to my face.  
Jezebel dreads asking, "What for?"  
"I want you to tell us about the Knot," Elijah asks of her.  
Her brows pull away from each other and her shoulders drop to a frozen position.  
"...You know everything. You are just too ignorant to put the pieces together," she intones.  
My brother's slow blink communicates his doubt.  
"You might as well hold back on the mystery, Love. While it is amusing to watch Tristan go through a brain spasm every time we ask, it's essential to my well-being and possibly your own. Besides, if you're lacking knowledge behind either of the term, why would you spell Tristan's trap shut?" I corner her.  
"So, the enemy knows more about the direct source than itself?" she returns quickly.  
Elijah takes up against her stance. "Who's going to be more sufficient with detail, do you think? Now, Tristan has proved to know you better than we expected. What say you? Regardless, we have reason to believe you're involved in a prophecy that ends with our family in a fiery pit of just due."  
She doesn't appear to understand his metaphors.  
"Lucien Castle's Seer showed us an overbearing vision of the end of the Mikaelson line. One to fall by family, one by friend, and one by foe. Though, it's unclear if you're the friend or the foe. Or if the Knot, as it's been called, is planning to make it more clear," I explain to her.  
She takes a moment to process, but we soon comprehend it's not her doing any processing at all; she's changing her mind.  
"Forget it. I'm losing time. I'm going to find Aurora myself," Jezebel finally declares.  
She stands and removes herself from the room.  
I'm stunned that she doesn't want to tell us off or make a mockery of our worries after a hard day's work battling all our antics.  
"We've hit a sensitive note," I comment to Elijah.  
He speaks expectantly, "Stop her."  
Half a second passes as I place myself on the second-story step in front of her. I take a step upward so my face can be inches from hers.  
"Allow me to make this a tad simpler. Tell the story of the Knot, and we won't have to drag you by the hair from your hovel later with a bucket full of questions. If there is time to kill, perhaps, I'll talk to Aurora about your vessel. If you obey, of course. I'd truly hate to do anything rash to my ex-inamoratas—unless she asked it of me," I respond cardinally.  
My assertive mood doesn't please her. Her nails dig into my chest as she pushes me back down onto the step I started on. She leans over me, leaving her fingers where they are.  
Jezebel hisses, "You want to hear the truth? If it weren't for me, there'd be no prophecy. You'd already be dead."  
Elijah is walking toward us when I hear the loud crack of stone. Jezebel's clutching her face, and when she looks at her hand, there's a fresh smear of black powder. Of all the effects of curses and disease I've seen cross the faces and minds of my family's challengers, I'd never seen anything like this. Like a china doll dropped by its owner, her dusty rose cheek grows a thin divide from her temple to the edge of her nose that could be drawn by pen to imitate the same width. Her eyes are wide in consternation. My chest is pounding, and I can see the dumbfounded gaze in Elijah's eyes as ash slowly trickle from the mystical injury. Darkness takes over the shine of her eyes.  
She notes briefly, "...You've wasted my night, I'm not going to let you waste my last minutes. I have to find Aurora."


	6. If You Can't Reach Me

**MARCEL**

"I suppose since you've proved your worth you'd like a bigger reward," Tristan says.  
I'm quiet, listening as he walks around one of my venues. He likes the tall ceilings, the square footage, the space to do his dirty work, the place to hide... I know I'm going to have to hand it over like everything else if I can't complete another request.  
"This one might be a little messy, seeing as no one really foresees the outcome of it, but I need you to do it because I believe you can. I want the Pythoness's vessel. Specifically, I want you to put her back on it," he enunciates.  
"Seems like a lot of steps... Especially since the Mikaelsons have yet to make a definitive statement about what their relationship is to her. If it isn't murky enough, it's not gonna help anybody when they make nice. Besides, I thought the point was to release her. You were gonna trap them on the vessel," I say doubtfully.  
"Well, plans can change," Tristan states. "The vessel is well-known and everyone knows what kind of cargo it holds. Putting the Mikaelsons on it...? Just as deadly to us as it would be the Pythoness. All it takes is a pair of strong hands to destroy it and we all fall down. Not to mention the scenario where, let's say, the Mikaelsons are wanted alive and for use. There is a hoard of unwelcomed guests coming, Marcellus. None of which come in peace. And surely, this town and the people in it will be obliterated if Jezebel is not up to surrendering. So, trap her and save your family: us. They'll want to beat you to it. I'd hurry."  
Thinking it a way of sending me off, I turn my back on him, ready to get this dicey chore out of the way.  
"And if the Mikaelsons should display a distaste towards our custody of the girl..." Tristan begins.  
A bright green folder gets frisbee'd into my hands.  
"Let them have a look at the facts. Literally," he finishes.

 **KLAUS**

I couldn't get her to say a word to any of my remarks or her plans to hurt Aurora. That's something I have not considered: am I going to sanction a battle to ensue when we find her?  
Jezebel takes notice of how I examine the strange injury on the side of her face.  
"It happens when the vessel gets damaged," she finally says. "She's trying to get my attention."  
"I will decide when violence is to result. Consider it an example of the grip you claim I don't have. You must let me talk to her," I tell her.  
Jezebel looks me over when she puts the engine of her outdated emerald car to sleep at our destination. It's the last place we've thought to look: Marcel's recycled cathedral. We're in luck for the reason that I can smell her from outside.  
Jezebel comments, "It's not your decision."  
I remove myself from the vehicle, following her closely, until she turns to me at the entrance.  
She warns me, "I won't hit first, I can promise that. But if she gets any more physical with me, I'm going to beat the shit out of her."  
"Try to limit yourself to hair-pulling," I order as she gets out of the car.  
She slams the door, looking at me through the open window.  
"Pulling is for teeth. Hair is for scalping," she replies.  
I wait a moment before I follow, eavesdropping outside the front entrance.  
"There you are," inside, Aurora grimaces, "oh! How unsightly. I suppose that nasty scar is my fault, I might have toyed with your vessel a little too much."  
Jezebel returns, "Just set it down, and we can forget about it; you've got the attention you crave, that's enough _._ "  
She talks to Aurora like a distressed and hasty child.  
"I used to enjoy it when you'd speak to me like that. So in charge and in control. It reminded me of him...Nik. In every little syllable. Maybe that's why I—"  
Jezebel interposes, "I wasn't in love with you. It's not a plausible cause to use in justification of killing me. I told you once, I will not tell you again. Kill me, and every sireline dies with me."  
"Yes, but you see I don't buy this...'kill me, kill all' agenda. You just don't want to die before Klaus knows the truth about you. Because you still love him," Aurora's excitement stirs.  
I hear Jezebel move toward her despite that devastating wildness in Aurora's voice. I find myself letting go of the golden handles of the chapel doors, listening closely.  
"That could be, or maybe I just love being right. Give it two days. The men around here don't go for hysterical girls, and Nik could be the first to send your crazy ass back to the _loquero_ ," Jezebel scoffs.  
Cracking glass echoes in my ears and Jezebel groans frustratedly.  
"And if you were as accurate as you say, you'd finally realize being in the right place at the wrong time does not make you innocent. You brought the Knot with you to New Orleans before, you'll do it again!" Aurora barks.  
A quick snap of plastic and breaking pottery sounds with every few steps.  
I quickly strut into the threshold. Their heads turning at the sound of my shoes hitting cement floors.  
I announce myself, "Stop this game."  
Aurora's red hair gleams in the moonlight as she walks closer to me in surprise.  
"This is not a game, Nik. This is an intervention. You're in danger of losing the love of your life: Me. We're finally together after so long apart, all the world before us, if we can just dodge a few minor obstacles like this nuisance of a prophecy, my brother's internment, the insufferable influence of Elijah... But what I cannot overcome is what Jezebel will try and convince you of. She means to make me the monster, but you don't know her like I do! I've waited far too long to share you now. Call me jealous," Aurora exclaims.  
Jezebel watches Aurora with intense concentration; she's processing the scene like a novel.  
"I remember full well the extent of your jealousies, but what surprises me is that they extend to the rival witch. She's a weapon of ours. Aurora, you can't believe she means anything to me," I tell her.  
Aurora interposes, "But I do believe it! I see it, the way you look at her. I think you love her."  
I have to stop myself from looking at Jezebel while she is expecting me to escape the neutral zone of the battlefield sooner or later.  
I step toward Aurora, "You know I love you, Aurora."  
Aurora smiles, her cheeks reddening at my confession. Jezebel jolts to her feet when Aurora looks down at the vessel in her hands.  
"I'm so glad you admitted that. I wanted Jezebel to hear it before I destroyed this," Aurora mutters happily.  
She breaks a large piece of vinyl off the shining black disc. The crunch of ivory and fine stone echoes in the room. Jezebel holds back a noise of pain. A dark line of destruction has appeared along her collarbone and neck.  
One more divide and it's over. I don't know if I want her to be gone.  
"Honestly, Aurora, these petty displays are beneath you! Threatening my leverage, wild scavenger hunts. It's all very ugly. Jealousy's more my game," I cry.

"I have no doubt that you love me despite it all, Nik. I will know for certain if you take this vinyl and crush it in your hands. We can both finally forget all about her! You'd practically be putting her out of her misery!" Aurora tells me, pressing the sharp vinyl into my chest.  
I look at Jezebel who returns a dare of a glance to me; she believes I'd do it. I believe that I'd do it. Aurora watches us and our lingering gazes. She jumps toward me and deepens the vinyl tear. The sound of breaking teacups whispers again. Jezebel can't move without falling apart.  
"I'll do it myself," Aurora says through gritted teeth.

I grab her, bringing her to the outside of the cathedral at vampire speed. I can't take her loving speeches, her adoration of me, her failure to let go of the past. I can't do this anymore. I press Aurora against the wall of the back exit. The yearning way she looks at me comes to remind me that in the last week I've barely thought of her. Something opened my eyes to the failure of this intimate affair.  
"...Niklaus!" she huffs.  
"I tire of this fantasy. You were someone I left behind years ago. I am sorry, but I cannot put up a performance for you any longer—there is nothing between us now," I scowl at Aurora, turning away from her.  
"You're just angry. Lovers fight, but I promise that we are meant to be. I can prove it-"  
"You think you know me? Then know this. If you hurt Jezebel, if you get in _my_ way I will gladly end you. Your spoiled little mind will then associate me with the Devil, and when your memories are rendered history, maybe you'll finally see you are— Ah! Nothing to me," I viciously interpose. "As of now, I need nothing from you."

 **JEZEBEL**

Every time I look over at Klaus in this quiet car, I can just see how he seeps in his disappointment. It isn't a color I've ever seen on him before and I don't know how to deal with upset people, but I'm sick of the silence and the traffic of yet another New Orleans holiday.

"I want to tell you I understand but I don't. All I can say is you made the right choice," I mutter.  
"Was that supposed to be uplifting?" he asks.  
"Uplifting? Oh. Hang in there, asshole," I reply.  
He rolls his eyes and sets his head against the car headrest.  
Klaus continues, "The right choice to save you or to discard my sister's sire with a very surreal past of rash decisions?"  
"Both. But she is capable of making the right choices like the rest of us; she would just rather blame it on her 'condition'," I answer.  
"You're rather hypocritical saying those things about others," Nik tells me. "Let's not forget who else in this city has a condition and uses it to their advantage. Not everyone gets to become a clean slate like you, Jezebel. Something tells me that the memories you do have a relatively fresh, and they tell more of a story than the ones you left behind. Your secrecy will get you nowhere but where Aurora is now, or have you not heard?"  
I want to protest and decline every bit of what he is saying to me. I have asked for help; I have sent signals, flares, alarms, fireworks to get his attention of all people...only, every signal happened in my head.  
"We're girls, Klaus, not wild animals. We're not crazy. We're goal-oriented," I remark. "As with all goals..."  
I stop the car in front of the Abattoir, locking his door so I can finish.  
"There are obstacles. Not all of them are fixable, you just have to get your shit together and find out how to stay focused. I've seen how you are with the facts, Klaus. You won't take a 'maybe.' When you asked me about The Knot, I was only going to tell you about what you already knew—Celeste, the farmhouse, the hurricane—and there'd be no difference. All I have is pieces and most are missing. It isn't my fault. I just haven't found my way around the obstacle," I explain. "So you can take the pieces I do have, or you can find out with me as we go along. Either way, you have to tolerate me. Do you think you can do that?"  
His eyes went out the window to the crowded street of tourists hustling from bar to bar on the through street.  
"It doesn't sound like I have much choice, given the circumstances," he agrees. "...But there are some things that you can explain here and now. Just a simple yes or no... Are we at least going to talk about what else I heard?"  
Yes. Sadly, terribly, absolutely _yes_.  
"No," I reply.  
I extend to him a paper with my number on it to avoid a new and old topic.  
"If you can't reach me tomorrow," I add, "ask the dead."


	7. Eye of the Storm

**KLAUS**

 _October 22_

Rebekah and I had glossed our story over and over to Elijah. We thought, conjointly, if he heard it, he might speak of it to his witch plaything. Celeste DuBois stood out as the gang leader of her brothers and sisters, a revered and polite woman oppressed by the upper class—she had the fury to pull her coven's weight, needless to say. All the more reason I still refer to her people as pains in the ass and an unnecessary evil.

"There are hallucinogens from the fungi on those trees, how are you certain you both did not experience the same fever dream?" Elijah jeered at us.

Rebekah retorted, "Look at him, Nik. Doing his best to prove his bedship with one witch equals the familiarity of all witches."

"As expected, but our brother's theory is not misplaced. Most witches are indeed the same. Each like a harlot; you trip over one every step you take," I agreed.

Elijah ignored our repetitive bullying as we all walked arm-in-arm into the main ballroom of the ostentatious Governor Deveraux's main home in the French Quarter. It was alive with second-rate orchestral covers and small talk among nobles that no one was bound to remember when they went home.

"Remind me why we still go to these shows of wasted wealth?" She sighed.

Elijah commented, "Have we not been one to be this absurd with our comforts?"

"Oh, don't put on a performance, Rebekah. Any chance you get to smuggle yourself into your handsome politician's britches is a happy chance," I remarked.

"That's enough," Elijah enunciated under his breath.

"Oh, don't come to her rescue. She's treading in dangerous territory only to achieve naught for her services. I've seen her feel the same exact way about five different men in a span of a month," I heckled them.

Our splenetic sister glared at me and my wide grin whilst Elijah kept a polished foot between the two of us. She had something to say; I would take pleasure in hearing it per her stutter. The empty coffin in our main parlor was taking up space without much use. I would have made it a small table, if not a place for "time-outs." It'd be rather artistic.

"Celeste," Elijah interrupted our thoughts.

Our staring contest continued even as the witch Celeste DuBois crossed between the telepathic disputation to give him a polite kiss.

Celeste DuBois was the Devereaux maid and the lover of our brother, Elijah. I never knew what he saw in her; then again, I never strived to make heads or tails of my siblings' affiliation. Why bother? Harlots are like rats in the quarter. You trip over one every step you take.

Celeste took my brother's hands, looking to each side in order to acknowledge us as a crowd.

"Discovered any new hobbies lately, Celeste? Like human sacrifice? Because, as the true rulers of this little kingdom, there are some disagreements we have within that sort of domain," I commented, stepping closer.

Rebekah found her common ground with me quickly. "Oh, brother, haven't you heard about the witches? They keep your friends closer and Elijah and Emil closer."

Celeste cleared her throat and boldly ignored us, looking at Elijah.

"I've brought someone. I'd like you to meet her, she doesn't know many people just yet—"

"Celeste, of course, we'll meet her. Why must you sound so concerned?" Elijah reconciled his paramour.

Just then, she reached behind Rebekah, where a girl had come to pass along from the bloodshot eyes of a crowd hungry for a pretty new virgin to rip to shreds by next week. My heart didn't drop, though, I could hear Rebekah's pitfall to her feet. The dark haired girl adorning the same warm facial features as the corpse in the wood stood before us, in style of looking as lost as the rest of us. Celeste held the girl close until she molded to her hip.

"This is my niece. She is in my care until her father and brothers return from their missionary work," Celeste introduced.

"Missionaries? To where?" Elijah inquired to the girl.

She hesitated the moment she saw my face. As it appeared our Jane Doe wasn't entirely dead yet, and she knew of my attempt.

The dame answered reluctantly in a soft Spanish accent, "Missionaries isn't exactly the phrase. They're in Mexico, assisting the war effort for independence."

"Spaniards for independence? I've never heard of such a thing," Elijah suggested. "You've always been a capitalizing people."

Rebekah imposed, "We've done quite the tour of Spain. The festivities, the wine, the art history, the parties… Our brother has stirred quite the trouble in Granada plenty of times before. You wouldn't happen to know him: Kol Mikaelson."

"Jezebel has had a recent accident that took a toll on her memory. She cannot remember most people prior to the last two years. I've been instructed to help with her rehabilitation," Celeste immediately defended the girl, Jezebel.

How convenient it was for her to have such a disorder. Conceivably, it was Kol's doing. Still, as time advanced onward, I had other suspicions. From that day forth Celeste had sixteen days left on her lifeline, and of it, the orphaned Jezebel seemed only recollective of what she wanted to remember.

Before we could pry apart the women's claims, we heard the sound of our governor's voice. He was calling for a speech.

"Let's postpone any further interviews. Come, Love. I don't want to ignore the Lord Devereaux," Celeste humbly suggested.

Jezebel saw her host about to flee the group with dearest Elijah, a hint of uncertainty in her face. She had half the mind to go after Celeste if it wasn't for my self-insertion in way of her path.

"Come with me. I'd like to take you for a stroll," he purred.

"Niklaus, perhaps, not now," Elijah called to me.

I made an attempt to take Jezebel's arm, but she knew I was going to make contact before I even began to reach.

"I'm sure Celeste could use an au pair for a second's notice. Excuse us," I replied to my brother, returning Jezebel's challenging gaze.

She walked a foot lighter behind me through the blossoming Summer vines and weeds attached to overgrown flora and fauna.

"I've always liked the name, Jezebel. It gets a bad reputation, but on many occasions, it's a name of great pride. War vessels, Roman ruins, a number of famous villainesses..." I spoke, taking a seat on the stone bench at the end of the garden. She stopped with her arms folded looking at me inquisitively.

"If I did something to upset you, I didn't mean it," she spoke.

I leaned my chin on my fist, waiting for her to go on.

"Pray tell, what could you have done to me? You've only been in the city for a day, no?" I invited.

She stepped toward me, the curls escaping the thin beginnings of her thick braid dancing on her temples.

"...I think you grasp that's not true," she admitted.

"It is an undertaking to lose such a valuable piece of your adolescence to comatose. Tell me, does this practice of memory entail dear Aunt Celeste burying you in a mountainous heap of white oak ash in the middle of the night and leaves you there to burn?" Long-windedly, I speculated.

She blinked at my words, taking a vow of silence at that. I reached for her neck, but with an excellent reaction rate, she avoided my grip. The tucked-in charm of her jewelry fell from her blouse, its whitened and rusted gold edges catching sunlight. The longer I leered at the symbol, the clearer it became to my eye.

"The man in the moon. You're with the Venjánca of the werewolf regime in Spain. You want to be unfair, I see. Well, I can match that. Your flag doesn't fly here, I'm afraid," I told her.

She didn't fall for my claims. "If you meant that you would have torn into me seconds ago. Please listen to me, I wouldn't have left the room with you if I didn't have something to say."

I managed to corner her against a nearby wall, she failed to notice I'd been walking her towards. She did not cower away, her eyes trained on mine and her arms relaxed at her sides.

"I'm not here to listen. I'm here to give you my rarity of a warning. If you have something to do with my brother–"

Quietly and quickly, she expounded, "I can't tell you who used the white oak. My father is an alchemist, I've seen it used as a protectant in shamanism and medicine. The ritual in the Brush you are referring to was performed by someone else, someone I don't know. It was supposed to heal my body from paralysis and break comatose. You set me ablaze long after the process had been completed. I woke, but I'm still at a loss with a part of my mind. How could I not remember anything between my fifteenth birthday and now? Except for one thing. Kol Mikaelson, I know that name. I want answers, too. I don't understand how I came to be in Celeste's custody, I don't know if she's my aunt. If I have an ally here, and it's your brother, I want to know who he is," she pleaded. "I don't know much about vampires, but they have the gift of compulsion, don't they? I am asking you in hopes you will uphold my respect for you. Please, help me remember."

Smoothing the cravat around my neck, I leaned my hands on either sides of her shoulders.

"Shall I check for comprehension then? You seem like a very intelligent girl, Jezebel. And you seem to know quite well what the consequences of the white oak have come to be. Why tell me all this? Are you looking for an alibi? Someone to defend your witchcraft? Surely, you're looking in the wrong place," I growled.

My compulsion would have been based around a simple theory, a gift box which could have held everything or nothing at all based on what she already knew. I was reluctant to hold a desire to punish Kol, but it was time to hold off. The urgency and the fast whispers which spoke of Jezebel's hurry could not be fabricated any better than her stories could have been rehearsed to reflect Celeste's.

I hadn't any time to answer her at all. Celeste broke up our conversation in an assertive and dangerous tone, "Jezebel. Come, we're leaving."

"Please, wait for me inside," Jezebel requested stressfully.

Celeste wouldn't move, though, she did as Jezebel asked and stood exactly where the gardens stopped being lustrous and well-kept and the grounds started to become hardwood flooring.

Jezebel gave up at my silence within a matter of seconds and started to recede from my side. Grabbing her arm, I pulled her back; her expression changed as if I had given her some hope.

"Regardless of who you respect in this city...you do not earn theirs by acting out of secrecy. I do hope your memory is not as faulty as you claim. That could put you in danger," I advised.

She tore her arm away, timidly brushing past Celeste who's domineering stare left Jezebel's back and targeted me for explanation.

I swallowed the paper up in my fist as I returned a charismatic grin.

"Lovely girl, bit of mouse, though, isn't she?" I scoffed.

Celeste did not respond as she walked away from the door and out of sight.

 **JEZEBEL**

 _October 23_

She tightened the makeshift collar until I felt it turn my throat narrow.

"Hands," she demanded of me.

Embarrassed and undignified, I refused to put my hands behind my back. Her coven aids grabbed them forcefully and locked them behind my back with a leather device.

"You have less than two minutes to undo them yourself, or it will cut off your air supply," she invited.

"Why must you give me an audience?" I whimpered.

Celeste smiled, "Because if you fail, I'll need the aid to revive you. Telekinesis is a beginner's tool, I expect you to complete it shortly."

"Then, the apparel is for your amusement?" I choked.

I heard one of her sisters chuckle.

"It is either you complete what I've asked of you, or you can eat that which you regurgitated this morning. Your pick," she threatened.

A tear shed from my eyes as I felt the collar begin to tighten and my wrist begin to cramp. I closed my eyes fearfully, imagining the leather restraints bursting off of my neck and my wrists, leaning into the fantasy of the release and believing in my ability to breathe. Nothing happened. I could feel my arms going numb.

A minute. I sensed Celeste cruelly tighten my corset to speed up the time.

I tried speaking one of the simple spells that Celeste had spoken before to send the letter opener straight into her hands from across the room.

" _Kelt len pris_ ," I coughed and repeated.

Nothing. Less than thirty seconds. My eyes were dry and hurting, and I felt my lungs begin to shrivel. Vision shrinking and pulsating, my dark reflection stood in front of me, watching the struggle.

"The devil always wants you to look back instead of forward. Too bad this devil doesn't have eyes on the back of her head. She only knows what you've told her, what she's seen. And all you've displayed a lack in your sense of self. Don't make it that easy on her. She has plans for you whether she lives or dies. Now's not the time to get curious about the outcome. Be her wild card," the reflection spoke to me.

I screamed violently with the last of my energy. The leather popped and the buckle on my wrists snapped in half. I heard something hit the ground.

I lied back on the floor collecting my breath, rolling over to growl into the carpet. I felt her reaching down to pick me up and try me again.

"Don't!" I shrieked in my anger.

Her touch hovered above the upstanding hairs on my arm. My face became damp from the combination of sweat and the light drool of my anger, I assumed.

She indicated, "They say clarity of mind and good will is the driving force of all magic...they never mentioned the overwhelming authority of wrath."

I turned my head to the side, right cheek to the warm and wet Persian carpet and I could smell it. Three of Celeste's aids lying beside me with their gritty hog, ram, and lamb masks facing me, the buckles of my restraints wedged into the place where their brows would part. They were all dead.

 **KOL**

I went out into the world without my family, and I reaped the price. I sought to be different and to have my own train of thought. If I were to be punished for being born, that's how it out to be: an emancipation of sorts.

When I met Celeste, I wanted to know everything about what she was and how the Knot came to be. None of Mother's text indicated such vulgar and devastating occultists could exist. I knew witches to have a certain complexity that exceeded the variety of vampire kind, but the Knot had a category of its own. It was like the Grimm Brothers had come to life in a crowd of cannibal Judas fetishists.

Celeste answered me that if I wished to understand the world as she did, I only need follow her. So, I practiced python magic, and here I lay in a death trap like a fly in a spider's web.

I lost my sight...in a matter of days it would be my hearing, my speech, too. She called it "the three evils." If I survived it...I didn't know what it would mean. The only way I would have found out was through Celeste's timid captive, Jezebel.

Rivaled in pain and cries for death, I heard her little feet and shallow breath when she came into the room.

"Kol, it's Jezebel," she spoke softly to me.

I felt her heat when she sat before me, her roaming smell of palo santo filling the butcher house space I imagined, this hell where I could not physically or mentally heal.

"You came back," I enjoyed, "How did you do it?"

"Elijah's come for a visit. They're inseparable. Eventually, she'll notice I'm not upstairs...not in my fucking pigsty," I heard her voice start to break, "If the way Celeste treats me is law, and this is what it means to be a witch...I don't think I can do it anymore."

"Is that all you've come to tell me? You've fell weak, when I'm the one bound and wrecked like a black sail?" I irritably barked.

"No," her voice quaked with anxiety, "I came to tell you I found Klaus Mikaelson. He thinks I've done something to you. I can't prove otherwise... How do I extinguish your brother's wildfire before it burns me down?"

My brother, the untameable lion. The longer I hold off on my only answer to our problem, the longer he is free to act like a fool. He'll get us both killed.

I felt a curse slap against my skin as I answered the frightened dame, "There is one thing no man or woman can resist to fear. That's my father, Mikael. If you can somehow call on him, he'll find my brothers and Rebekah and run them out of New Orleans."

"I don't—how can I find him?," she whispered.

"The Walk Of the Chimeras. It's a spell of the Knot's making; you can enter anyone's dreamworld. I don't remember how it goes, you'll have to find another source. Can you do that?" I resolved.

"...I can try. Kol," she mumbled, "what happens? If he doesn't come and you lose..."

She did not finish, but I interpreted her referral to my hearing and speech.

I took to my tale quickly, "I attempted the Knot's witchcraft. You see, theirs is not written in any book or historical map for other covens to follow. It is inbred among witches who would not let nature rule the day. I wanted to be foot above my siblings. I needed them to fear me, so that they could never subdue me again. But I do not have Carmila's blood in my veins...the craft comes with a trap lain for outsiders. The three evils, vanquished. I will become a hollow shell...I cannot save myself if all I have is my thought. If they even carry the decency to leave me that."

I could hear her swallow.

"If you ever speak to me of incapabilities again, just memorize the look of me now. This could be you. Stop holding yourself back," I howled quietly.

An unending silence that felt like 30 days was disrupted by the physically momentary touch of her cold hands. They were soothing on my greasy and dirty skin. The trail of mint cold they left evolved into the sensation fo a stiff rag. She was wiping the glue of sweat from my face and neck. and clean my wounds like they'd become mortally infected.

"What are you doing?" I sighed tiredly.

"Being strong. And helping you continue to do the same," she replied.

The sting of the fresh water on my mortally infected chest and arms, drizzled down into the rusted metals and tools lodged into all my bendable parts.

Eventually the relieving and stinging feeling went away. Her hands squeezing the fizzing damp fabric hesitantly, I heard her footsteps vanish with one little pat on the way out.

 **ELIJAH**

 _October 26_

The tickle of her breath on my face was like one of the little deaths I'd suffer from every touch she gifted me. I stopped her dressing hand and pulled her back into the bed with a playful bite on her neck, vibrating with sweet laughter. She connected the freckles of my chest with her delicate fingers.

"You feel different when you're here," her sweet Jamaican voice said to me.

My warmer hand glided over the skin of her arm, up and down.

"I've seen you less and less every day. What is changing?" she continued.

I endeavored to make myself more available, drawing her as close as she could possibly come. She smiled through her disarray of lengthy ringlets.

"With your family needs, I assumed your attention would be on your niece," I teased.

The sheeted velvet legs of Celeste draped over mine, her beating chest against my arm.

"Jezebel's a winsome girl. She's plainly in the wrong place at the right time," She identified my conjecture with a rustle. "She needs guidance, and that's why she's here."

In mention of innocence, my mind went to Niklaus when he took her "for a stroll."

Stirring in my spot to sit upright, I queried, "Did she say what it was my brother said to her?"

"No. She hasn't," Celeste replied.

I hadn't the time to hold off any longer. There was a reason I stayed last night and Celeste was well aware by the urgency of my insistance.

"I came last night to ensure you and Jezebel were safe," I admitted, "Niklaus seems to believe whatever he claims to have seen in the forest hides among your witches...he sent the townsmen on a raid."

My hand wraps around the under of her bicep to keep her from rising. Celeste ignored me, removing my shirt from her back and retrieving the ember clothing that dangled from her headboard.

"You shouldn't have done that. I need to be there when they are in peril! You should have told me!" she cried.

"Celeste," I spoke with caution.

"Your brother goes to far! He could have stopped him," she angrily hissed.

With a tired pain in my body, I sat up and began to dress.

"You speak as if I've been able to stop him in the past. Once Niklaus has made up his mind, the tools required to halt his train of thought are priceless and a fantasy," I reminded her.

She stopped, nodding slightly.

"If that's right, how do you expect him to react to the ring on your finger," solemnly, she said. "What tools will you have to stop him then?"

"Klaus lives by the doctrine of our family curse. To be loved by the outside, more than the inside...it's a death sentence. I am brave enough to believe otherwise, as well as to prove it," I consoled her, taking her hands.

Celeste's frightened and furious frown loosened, however, it did not vanish.

"I must go," she sighed.

 **KLAUS**

I watched armchairs, papers, books fall from windows; I heard the screams of witches in each corner of the Quarter. I was not to let my paranoia go unchecked, however. Jezebel's information did not serve me poorly at all. If it was a healing ritual the white oak was used in, no doubt whoever helped her gain a gracious recovery was hiding some away for personal use against us. Every witch in our city would have liked to see us dead in the most painful and ironic way imaginable.

Speak of the devil, Celeste and her protegé scurried through the chaotic roads filled with possible candidates for slaughter.

"Why would he do this?" Jezebel asked her.

"Why wouldn't he? He just wants to see us suffer," Celeste barked at her.

Jezebel stopped when she looked in my direction, but her face didn't speak of fear or disgust. It was confusion.

"What are you doing?" Celeste hissed.

"Saving them," Jezebel swallowed.

Her black waves swayed in the dusty breeze of an oncoming storm as she approached me. Behind her, a makeshift stage for execution was quickly assembled and three pretty harlots were lined up for the test of strength.

I welcomed Jezebel with a smile and a violent look in my eyes. I'd been waiting for a sign that required me to destroy her; I believed that was it.

She did not confront me in the end. Her hand pressed on the top of my arm's external build, and she pushed me aside.

" _Hola_ ," her soft voice greeted.

I turned around, watching her crouch down in the alley behind me. A small child sat behind some boxes, and his petite dusty brown feet curled inward with apprehension.

"Can I hide with you?" she asked him.

She disappeared behind the tall of the boxes, the boots on her feet laying relaxed on the gorund next to him.

"He's standing right there..." the boy cried.

The lesser part of my name was being spoke in his vagueness.

"Who?" she asked.

"The vampire," the boy cried aloud. "He put my sister up there!"

I began looking up where the fat little fist pointed. I do recall a rather cocky seamstress who sought to shoot me dead with a rifle after I fed from her mother.

"That's not going to happen to you. Do you want to hear why?" she said, "Because I'm an angel. I can't fly and I can't make him go away, but there is one thing I am good at. If you hold my hand, I'll make you invisible."

She stopped crouching, getting to her feet and holding out her hand.

"Do you want to try it?" she smiled.

The small hand took the patient girl's hand, his bruised chin quaking as he clung to her like a wingless insect.

Jezebel made eye contact with me once again as she took the boy out into the chaos, past Celeste, and up onto the gallows shaky platform.

Elijah had raced to Celeste side just in time to see Jezebel ruin my entertainment.

Jezebel took the rifle off of one of the militia men's backs and aimed it at me. Her shot was impeccable for a sloppy hand.

Everyone had stopped and glanced in my direction to see if I would kill her myself.

"My name is Jezebel Zhukov _del estado Cuerpo Sagrado_. I cannot make you stop the trials, I am just one person and someone's independent. But I can help you. If you have a family or you are simply afraid, so am I. I am terrified, and I don't know if I'll ever be with them again. I am walking your son to the nearest chapel and I am going to take your children, as well. They shouldn't have to die because their female leaders stepped in or had a lifestyle that did not agree with the Mikaelson family. _Madres y hermanas y hijas...brujas, no los culpo. Ellos tienen miedo, también_ ," Jezebel shouted. " _Buena Muerte_."

As soon as she dismounted the stage set for three sobbing women, a hoard of children followed close behind her step.

Jezebel did not make a single false promise at any point in her announcement. She did not promise that the children would see their loved ones again, she did not demand a change or for a halt in the madness. It felt like she knew how this city functioned as any other. Death could visit for the silliest reason, but Jezebel always looked to crush the fruit of the dead's pain and humiliation, starving Death to no end.

Celeste, just as surprised as Elijah, watched the girl walk away in the direction of the crucifix risen higher than the dying sun on Bourbon.

"As it seems, Niklaus, you've been challenged to the greatest duel yet: compassion," Elijah scoffed at me.

 **JEZEBEL**

 _October 27_

I had gone to take the clothes down from what had been hung on the back porch and found myself in a garden moreso than on a plain wooden deck.

There were random and grotesque things everywhere, including the spilt wax of still-burning candles and a caged bird. I knelt down by the bored looking creature, whose twig-like leg had been broken to prevent its escape.

"It's for you," Elijah notified as he joined me, "The Louisiana covens know all about your act of bravery yesterday."

He stepped up onto the porch with me as I numbly took in all the gratitudes that'd been left for me overnight.

"I'm sure Celeste is highly proud of your actions," he spoke with bewilderment.

There was nothing to be proud of. I caught a glimpse of what it meant to be a witch, and equally so what it would be like if I didn't escape this place. I was a monster who had did not share the same blood as the men who could one day be tying a rope around my neck.

"It was not bravery, it was common sense. Those children shouldn't have to see their mothers humiliated like that," I swallowed, touching the delicate horns of a bull's skull.

"Niklaus has had a severe struggle with witches since our mother so venomously made him what he is. Should I interfere..." he began with a slight smile.

The top of my hand was tickled by a prickly sensation a lot like a cactus. As I glanced down, I admired the long-legged spider that hand befriended me. I lifted it into Elijah's view, letting the small being roam back onto the leaf of a bundle of lavender.

I warned, "When a spider finds a companion, sometimes they will consume the other because there is such competition among them. But the companion will not struggle or fight back...in fact, they often aren't aware of what comes next. Did you know that?"

"I hadn't any idea you were so intrigued by mammal sciences," he spoke with narrowed eyes.

I replied, "I grew up with a love for animals. If I ever planted my two feet inside their indigenous homes, I think not of trying to change them; they have been here just as long as you and me. I have no choice but to adapt to their law. It is the same for her as it is for us in her web."

I tapped the petal the spider danced across as I continued to gaze up into his walnut eyes. "You need to figure out who is going to consume you first, Elijah. Klaus or Celeste."

He seemed to be uncomfortable by my argument and my encoded reasoning, but not confused.

"I appreciate your offered advice. I do hope, as your memory returns, you'll be able to ask yourself how it has served you in the past. Please allow me to consider it on my own," he acknowledged stiffly.

I watched him walk away from me, strolling into the house as if we'd never spoken.

A sharp pinch on my hand jolted me back from the table I leaned on. The tiny black pearl had taken a bite from the gentle pad of my finger.

Sensing the spider fall to my feet, my eyes follow its trail down into the abyss hosted by a crack in a makeshift step at the edge of the porch.

"It sensed your endangerment," I heard from the doorway.

I turned to my reflection, cradling the fang mark on my bleeding index. She removed her metal frames, her bright and tragically-disciplined eyes relaxed on my identical face.

She charily pronounced, "Here's your first warning, Pythoness. Familiars only appear when they sense their master is close to death. It's a shame no one can teach you to change fate."

 **JEZEBEL**

 _October 28_

"I apologize for the hour I've chosen, I just don't know how much longer I can keep this in," I heard Elijah announce himself.

It was Midnight. The church bells had struck for the last time until morning. My worn red nightgown caught on the splintered wood of my bedding's footboard while I shifted to be closer to the door and listen.

"What is it, love? You're white as a sheet. Sit," Celeste spoke with caring.

I could comprehend how quickly one could trust her when she committed herself to a motherly tone of voice.

"What is happening? Is it Niklaus? Where's Jezebel!" She feigned panic.

Elijah explicated, "It's Rebekah. It's Kol... All of us. In her bedroom, I found the urn where we once kept white oak burnt to disheveled charcoal in her fireplace. I confronted her. As it appears, Kol received those ashes by her stealthy hand of robbing Niklaus and I. He told her he was to take them to Spain and aid a girl's life in peril. Albeit, Kol could very much be alive...I worry that girl was Jezebel. And that Niklaus will force her to use whatever else she may have against him."

"...Are you asking if I know of Jezebel's relationship to Kol?" Celeste intoned.

A loud pause.

"What Rebekah was thinking is beyond my knowledge, but it stays between us. I swear it," Celested believed, "Just...don't ever accuse my niece of something so hateful again."

He hadn't. I prayed this was the moment he realized her manipulative nature, his emotional abuser. No, she didn't constantly do these things to him. But she didn't want him, either. I felt like I knew what I was thinking, though I couldn't remember why or where the experience had come from.

Still, Elijah spoke guiltily and cut himself off with a sigh, "You're right. I apologize, I..."

When nothing else was being said, I imagined it was time for me to stop eavesdropping. No matter, I fell asleep sitting up against the wall.

When I woke, it was to an incessant pressure upon my thighs. Sitting up, the flickering tongue of the familiar wagged in my face doggishly.

I had been bitten by a snake just like it when I was little, and perhaps, on any other day I'd still hold the same panic I did on that summer afternoon.

I looked down at my swollen finger, knowing it had come for its benefit. I pressed on it with my separate hand to make it bleed, placing it near the scaly pink mouth of the reptile.

Without hesitation, its jaws snapped open and shut on the bite and made me whimper in pain. As it drank, I thought to ask my guardian a perilous question.

"You've come to preserve me...you must know I'm going to do next. If you have the mind to serve me in my disobedience, do so while you take me to the father of vampires. Tonight," I spoke below my breath.

Bare-bodied, I stood beside the cold metal tub and its cold substances. I wasn't entirely sure if I was already dreaming or if I was listening to a spirit's demands correctly.

The black ophidian swam in circles innocently on the surface of the water, reflecting the three lit candles of the room. It had said one was for sight, the other for sound, and the last for speech. If any light was hushed...I'd be trapped in the mind of the killer I was calling upon.

I did not condone how well I'd done with previous practice of witchcraft, but as it was coming to be, it did not disenchant me.

I inhaled bravely and stepped one foot at a time inside of the current the animal was drawing on the surface. I shivered at the touch of the cold water.

My head touched on the back of the tub as I struggled to keep my eyes closed for the first few tries.

The ophidian began to dance around my propped leg warningly, yet when I looked down, it appeared my familiar had doubled, tripled, multiplied into an entire coven of snakes. My anxiety body tensed as they all began to squeeze around my bare parts and drown me in unconsciousness.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a burnt forest, surrounded by corpses of trees and murders of crows. I did not have to wonder if I had entered the right dream.

Behind me was a tunnel of twigs and broken black tree bases. I could hear screaming and see Nordic letters dancing on twine from the trees.

I approached the tunnel, counting each step until I was in complete darkness. Even when I had thought to turn around, I could no longer see light.

As I walked, I felt things brushing against me; warm, soft, wet, rotten. The entails of the tunnel grew closer and closer until it felt like I was trying to escape a beast's soft intestine. I felt my face and body become wet with the foul-smelling dark and my feet begin to run when something produced a disembodied moan.

By the time I'd reached the end of this tunnel, I realized I was covered in blood and the twigs had turned to body parts. Nausea overcame me as I reduced myself to a stunned crawl and landed at the soles of someone's shoes.

"It appears I should have checked twice," the masculine voice spoke to itself.

When I sat up on my knees, the face of a pale man with dark and long blonde hair held his stake above my head.

"I have a reason to be spared," I panted fearfully.

"No invasive creature which leaves that tunnel has a reason to live," he bellowed.

"My name is Jezebel Zhukov," I spoke quickly, "My mother was Carmila. I know you once killed several members of the Knot. I need you to do it again."

He lowered his weapon immediately, grabbing the fabric on my arms to bring me to standing.

"Do not speak the name of those radical devils who ripped my infant son from my arms. When I kill them, it will be on my own accord, not by order of werewolf bastards," he hissed in my face.

"The Knot will take all your children before you get the chance if you don't find them now. Please. Come to New Orleans. Destroy Celeste and her goals before she uses your children to achieve it," I strived.

He dropped me on my feet, causing me to nearly lose balance.

Mikael spoke, "New Orleans...of course. Why nitpick my victims? I'll destroy the whole land before it sees another year. Should you wish for your livelihood, you best make your escape while you can. Now, get out of my head... _witch._ "

I catapulted from the cold water, splashing every wall hiding my crime.

The image of the stacked body parts and the man's violent gaze projected a small spill of vomit from my stomach to one side of the tub.

I managed to do what I'd been told. But if that was true, why did I feel like I'd made things worse?

I'd have to stop Mikael before he killed the wrong people, and I was not confident I could do so. I needed a defense; there'd be no better chance of figuring out what it would be than the grimoire built around Mikael's family. Esther's grimoire would prove to be useful after all.

In the morning, I prepared for the gala by trying on the satin emerald dress Rebekah lent me. She said I looked too "comfortable" in most of the things she knew I had. I didn't dress like the southern belles of New Orleans for a reason. Displaying wealth I didn't have got many women in trouble before me; dressing like a house girl tended to leave you underestimated and be safer.

" _Aye, qué pasa? Quién viene? El rey?_ " a beloved voice came behind me. My brother Matías leaned in the doorway, smiling at me. He was not transparent, he did not fizzle like a figment of my imagination—I could smell his earthy scent from across the room. He was here.

"Matías," I breathed in disbelief.

I could have tipped him over with the strength of my hug, his strong arms crushing me from my lower back.

" _Estaba tan preocupada por ti. Dondé has estado? Dondé está Papá?_ _Lo está aquí?_ What about Celeste? We can't stay here—"

"You can't leave, Jezebel," he replied as I tugged at his arm.

Matías didn't speak English.

" _Qué?_ " I frowned.

He turned to me, hands in the pockets of his old grey uniform pants. He hadn't worn them since the day...since the day he left for independence work and didn't come back.

Was I back in my own head? That wasn't supposed to be happen. Seeing my familiar in the nearby darkness made me think otherwise. If a familiar was the ghost of a spirit come to relieve its master of struggle, did that make it family?

His face suddenly turned a crisp black and prickled with fresh ember, the room around him growing hotter.

"You can't go. Look what happened to me, to us...the same awaits you," he continued.

I stepped back, my brain going blank, at a disability to think.

I rushed out of the room, mindlessly calling for help when I knew full well that was not my brother. Celeste's house turned into a familiar chapel of some kind. It felt familiar, but I recognized none of it.

My father and brothers Marco and Lau sat on their knees before the altar I stood on in my torn underdress and boots I loved so much. They did not look at me even when I asked them to.

"Run! Go!" I sobbed.

My father's forehead bled, my brothers' necks let their heads slip right off.

When I woke, I felt my heart burst into a million pieces and my screams unable to cradle it. The familiar was gone, its bite left in patterns all over my torso and legs with microscopic underwater geysers sprouting blood flowers for my cautioning.


	8. Falling to Pieces

**REBEKAH**

When I got out of that coffin, my heart was fleeting with joy to see Elijah's face. I've been staked by his ex and drowned by Nik's. That's quite a combination I've been through.  
He brought me fresh clothes and promised to explain the "new situation at hand" once I returned to his side in the car. I think I've figured it out. I check the pockets of the jacket he lent me: there lives the phone number of Jezebel Zhukov. I think it might be a joke at first, but then, what would we have to laugh about if she caused so much heartache? I love my brothers, but they are stupid enough to forget when it's time to make the right decision and leave the past in the past. So much so, I'm not sure they know what the term present day is.  
"Still hungry, are we?" Elijah asks when he sees my unhappy face.  
"Aya, Aurora and now, Jezebel?" I sigh, holding up the paper. "You two need a lesson in women."  
"Have you not damned some to an eternity and viciously antagonized others? You claimed you left things on better terms with Jezebel above the three," Elijah says as he retrieves it.  
"I'm more of a skilled imitator than she ever was. Why bring her into this?" I frown.  
Elijah leans on the car door, looking as though he's having complications explaining himself. He silently opens a new blood bag for himself, slitting open the top with a graceful slice of his nail.  
"Alright. Does this posse of ex-sweethearts believe in this prophecy, too?" I scoff.  
The silence has gone on so long, I can't remember Elijah's tone of voice.  
"You don't," I pray of him.  
He replies, "You'd be foolish to ignore the manifestation of witchcraft and premonitions in this time."  
"We can't be killed," I remind him.  
"The prophecy does say one will fall by family," he responds.  
I analyze, "Well, I wouldn't hurt you. Freya hates traitors, but she has an allegiance to Finn of sorts...so that leaves Nik."  
"If we're to be morally correct...it isn't out of the question for any of us to find needles in the fruit at this point. It is not the role of family that has me wanting to pack up and leave now. It's Jezebel. When Aurora spoke out about the injustice I caused her, Niklaus and I had one of our infamous quarrels. I dread if Jezebel speaks out next...the one who falls by family could be the most guilty-hearted of brothers," he frets.  
I wish I were able to console him or to change his mind. I remember 1820; time and reality warped like never before. Elijah disappeared for days on end and was virtually inconsolable. Niklaus somehow had become the upright head of the family and excelled at it for the most part. Jezebel had brought balance, empathy, change—some good and the rest devastating. She came in at a vulnerable time and nestled in our blindspot, where she was safest. And then, she did what Celeste did to us. The day we never saw her again was the day storms stopped and the family retained shape. Elijah refused verbal communication on the day she disappeared all the same as the day before that and the day before that. Niklaus went back to being—Niklaus _the narcissist_. And though I'd never tell—not even tomorrow—I started to carry the unspoken pain of Klaus who could not say out loud how contrite he was. He was not the only one who was left heartbroken and deceived. I wonder what the context of Klaus's guilt was. Did he genuinely missed her or he was afraid of her? Jezebel had her evils, and if she was out there, she knew many things about us the rest of the world didn't.  
"Elijah?" I mutter.  
He holds the car door open for me when he returns from the nearby counter.  
"...Did she ever tell you? Why Celeste had done what she did?" I questioned.  
Elijah leans on the door, putting his hand in his pocket as I slowly took my seat inside.  
"I've made my peace with the insignificant past. If you haven't, I suggest you keep your distance, Rebekah. We needn't a brand new haul of melodramatics to discourage this family," he indirectly claims, "and please try not to provoke her. It's harmful enough we've put her in the middle a second time."

 **VINCENT**

A light knock at my door invites me to unchain and unlock all its bolts. I had them put on as soon as this town got a few new rogue assets. Jezebel's eyes follow me without the rotation of her head as I step aside to let her in.  
She holds up a small cage with an even tinier bird fluttering around on the inside.  
"Never show up to the home of a warlock without an offering," she intones.  
She sets it on my coffee table, removing her jacket while she watches me close the door slowly. Almost immediately, I've started to rethink what I called her for.  
"I want to control it. My ancestral magic," in spite of my hesitations, I tell her.  
I could have asked just about no one else for the favor. Old magic is out of the question in the French Quarter; those people who go off into the night and strip down for a dance with the devil are the same people that wake up the next morning shunned and with a due execution. There are reasons the DuBois name was scorned for complying to the rules of the Knot and changed to Griffith.  
She crosses her arms, looking up at me from the edge of the coffee table. I seat myself across from her.  
"That's a quick change of heart for a man who was so adamant to abstain from all witchcraft," Jezebel comments.  
"That's just it. I failed to control it before, but I can't afford it anymore. Marcel Gerard is in full swing of being the Strix's middleman. He tells me they're bribing a local, Van Gnuyen, to become the new Regent," I begin.  
"You said you were the Regent," she frowns.  
"I give my provisions and support, but I ain't no leader. Until now. Marcel all but attacked my methods of keeping witch business as _witch business._ He got to me. On top of that, I'm not letting vampire scumbags like Tristan De Martel take control of nine different Louisiana covens by making a puppet of a college kid," I ranted. "You said my ancestral magic was from the same Knot your mother belonged to. You should know enough to teach me—and you're the only full-blooded pythoness known to date."  
"Vincent, adapting a new way of life will not suddenly make you a leader. I can think of so many more things that make you more qualified than some child," Jezebel advises.  
"You have to understand! What the New Orleans witches see in me is a man who has made too many mistakes and has had nothing to lose in the last twenty years. They immediately think about a compassionate flake who helped the Mikaelsons once or twice along the way," I doubt myself.  
"What do the Mikaelsons have to do with running for Regent?" Jezebel questions.  
"The witches have been under their feet for centuries! You of all people should know," I complain.  
She stands, her platformed boots clapping on my floors in her light pacing.  
"Vincent, when I urged you to live up to your birth magic, I meant for the sake of having emergency leverage; not to prove someone wrong," she lectures me.  
"So, you wouldn't mind being the only one with this kind of power in a place where everyone hates you when the Knot comes marching in?" I bellow, standing up. "It's you against an angry majority. Come on, Jez, even one person of your own caliber will do you some good."  
Hearing my command, her hands swim from the adjustment of her tribal tube top to her hips, her curvy and lean legs strutting towards me like a hungry panther.  
"I could teach you how to take over all of Northern America in twenty-four hours with just a cellphone. How willing will you be to help the outlaw when you're as good as that? You're a wonderful man, Vincent, but you're a follower. Whether or not you want to help me or yourself, I can't encourage you anymore," she suggests casually.  
Her phone chimes, and she immediately directs her attention to its glowing screen. I grab her arm before she can excuse herself.  
"They're gonna pick tonight!" I snap.  
She rips her arm away, glaring into my frustrated eyes.  
"There's nothing I can do!" she cries.  
Coming down from the heat of our conversation, she exhales heavily outside my door.  
"Treat this like a typical Thursday, Vincent. It might help you clear your mind," she suggests.

 **JEZEBEL**

I roll my eyes to the sound of jovial trumpets and tambourines in the distance. New Orleans wouldn't be New Orleans without the sound of overreaching jazz everywhere you go, but maybe I would hate it less if it took to terrible indie rock more often. I spent a lot of time in California in the seventies; I guess I've developed a culture bias.  
I twist my phone from the small pocket of my jacket made of a werewolf's coat. I get sent straight to Klaus's voicemail.  
"I've been told by a man to wait in a graveyard several times before, and they always at least showed up on time. Ten minutes, or I leave. Call me," I warn him.  
The loose cobblestones in the floor grind behind me, causing me to stop my step and put the phone away. I turn to face my company. The young man stands his ground against my vicious gaze, looking sorry as ever.  
"You're the old one," He begins.  
I don't answer. He licks his lips stepping towards me.  
"My name is Van Gnuyen. I hear you're trying to turn Vincent Griffith into a devil worshipper to get the better of me," he whispers to me. "What right do you have sticking your nose into a coven's business?"  
Word travels fast. I pray I am not standing of an aftermath that Vincent might have achieved overstepping his boundaries.  
I smirk a little, "I'm the one who is under arrest? Tristan gave you a good amount of money to be his bitch for the time being. Do you know where all that money will go in the end? What are your sisters going to think when they hear you took money from vampires?"  
He clasps his hands together, holding them to his lips.  
"What Tristan did or did not offer me is even less of your concern," Van says. "As the new Regent, I'm going to run you out of here. We all know war follows the Knot wherever it goes."  
"Do all your friends believe the same?" I wonder.  
A hoard of women and men, youthful or spending their last breath protesting me, remove themselves from the dark shadows beyond and between the graves of the Black Clay Cemetery once I've called them out.  
"You threaten our land, powerful or not. Having a pythoness in the Quarter can imbalance the divided authority and relative peace we've worked hard to keep," the girl in a glimmering sari says to me.  
"Peace? Really?" I mock her concern. "You're alright being shoved into a few square miles of land while vampires get the rest?"  
"The Ancestors—"  
"Are ghosts with a gossip column," I finish for Van.  
I remove my hands from the warmth of fur pocket lining and cross my arms.  
"The Ancestors have warned us of you _,_ witch. You, your ancestors, your mother—you have all ruined our system and used your lineage as an excuse," A woman with a Nigerian accent calls from the front. "Now, you're going to let your rejected sisters upset the balance of nature!"  
My chest is hosting a wildfire of restlessness and burning up my self-control. I know little than what the Knot is looking for. I've been rogue ever since...why is it always on me when the balance of nature is upset?  
Marcel Gerard steps out into the corner of my eye. He holds out my vessel for everyone to see. He must have seen Vincent hide it for me. Or their feud was less sour and still sweet enough to share dangerous grounds. The enthusiastic coven aggressively asserts Marcel to do their dirty work.  
The vessel snaps in half before my sight. The elasticity in the skin of my arm snaps like a twig; a dark and jagged line is visible from my wrist to my elbow. The world disappears and a blank screen enfolds my eyes.

 **REBEKAH**

Sitting down with my family the moment I got home felt like a dream that had taken a long time to come true. An entire bottle of Jack Daniel's split evenly and empty between us, night unfolding with a prelude of grey-purples and orange above our heads in the courtyard. Freya's hand is in mine and Niklaus, though trying his best to enjoy, stewing in worry of his latest phone call.  
"Did he say what it was about?" Elijah asked the troubled Niklaus.  
Jezebel.  
"It was about Jezebel. There was an incident with the witches; he wouldn't disclose it explicitly in his location," Klaus hesitantly tells us. "It's fair to have anticipated the presence of bad blood when she chose to stay."  
I look to Elijah, who asserts with his returned gaze he is aware of nothing on the subject.  
"Let's just hope she hasn't killed anyone this early in the night," Freya relies on the most common outcome.  
I blurt, "Does it always have to be her fault?"  
All of my siblings look at me, a tad shocked by my defense of a girl I allegedly know little about.  
Thankfully, I don't have to explain myself right away. Vincent Griffith presents himself coming through our gates.  
"This time it's not," Vincent replies to my statement, "Her vessel was destroyed. We don't know by who. She's not tethered to the living any longer."  
Klaus stands, exchanging glances with Elijah.  
I ask bewilderedly, "What does it matter? She's a part of the prophecy, she could have been an accomplice to one of our deaths."  
"Precisely," Elijah agrees.  
Klaus isn't so reluctant to take a breath. "That's impossible, the vessel was hidden in our home. She gave it to me—"  
He pauses, looking to Elijah once more.  
"Unless it was a fake. She asked me to hide it, she must have been testing me with an old record she dug up," he sighs.  
"Well, she gave me the real one. While I was out dealing with witch business, someone left my door wide open. I've never invited any vampires inside," Vincent insinuates, looking over at Freya.  
Aggressively, she asserts, "Are you accusing me of something?"  
"Not really. But if not for my initial explanation, you'd be my second. Look, I know how Jezebel ties into your prophecy. And believe me, she's gotta be alive in order for you find a way around it," Vincent cautions us.  
Elijah wants to know, "She's tried to poison and maul just about everyone in her way, how could she possibly help us?"  
"Because we never considered what we were in the way of," Klaus answers before Vincent. "She was going to tell me about the Knot. Someone or something didn't want her to tell us what was happening."  
Vincent was silent long enough for use to draw a silence with him. No one knows what to do.  
Then, he speaks, "You still interested?"

Klaus is sitting in the table's end armchair, swirling his drink like he always does when he's prepared to accept his time has been wasted  
"You're the only person who hasn't denied knowing their names. Why might that be?" Klaus inquires.  
Vincent crosses his arms, admitting, "They're not a registered coven. They work quietly and they take credit for almost nothing. To be a part of the Knot, you've got to be born into it. Jezebel and myself are the youngest."  
"So, this is some sort of cult," Elijah questions before I can get to it.  
Vincent corrects him, "Inhumane, crazy beliefs and practices; they do meet all the marks," Vincent explains. "Their objective is not far from it, either. I've read the DuBois grimoire, so has Jez. All signs point to the resurrection of the leader by the end of the year, and Jezebel, Klaus, and Celeste are the the first names on the list of supplies...and Kol Mikaelson."  
Little by little, it fails to make sense.  
"Celeste and Kol are dead," Elijah says frailly.  
"You would think," Vincent, eyes slanting upward at him, insinuates.  
Klaus' cup freezes in his grip and Elijah inhales quietly as they exchange glances with me, going over synchronized theories in their heads.  
"Celeste DuBois was powerful enough to become an ancestor, representative of the Knot and natural magic all at once. She died knowingly and willingly to make sure anything she says, goes. And that is how she turned the ancestors away from Jezebel and away from me," Vincent reveals.  
I look over at Elijah, just wondering what is happening behind those blank eyes, or if there is deep thought at all. Celeste just became further and further from his expectations, and I knew it had to be damaging for him to comprehend.  
"What is the quantity of members in this group of devil worshippers?" Klaus wants to know.  
"Most of the partitions are dead. They're endangered, power-hungry, and illegal under witch law. Failure isn't in the cards. They were only discovered to be real because of the genocides of their own people. I'd say any Knot left in existence is the very first," Vincent insists.  
Freya inquires, "Where would we begin to look if we were going to get her back in her body?"  
"If it was intentional, she probably cloaked it. We won't find it any time soon. But I know you have history. I'm sure you can think of a few places she'd hide," Vincent replies. "...She's gone through hundreds of different bodies, not even a vampire's energy can withhold her spirit. They're good enough only for a few hours at most. We've got to start looking, because if someone else gets to the real thing before us, there's no figuring out how her people will turn this prophecy around."

 **MARCEL**

"Alright...I know I was in the wrong to ask that of the girl you hate most. But she's been there for me in the past, pulled me out of hard times; you will have to deal with that so long as you got me," I hear Vincent call high to the Ancestors.  
I stay back, observing his speech to a couple dozen glowing candles made from scratch by the kids who don't know they aren't just kids yet.  
He goes on, "That's right. You could have picked Van Gnuyen, the guy who got caught in the vampires' web. But you got me, and I ain't in the mood for pomp and circumstance. Our city's about to collapse, and I'm gonna need all the guidance I can get... Jez isn't gonna do nothin' to you, she's not the problem. The problem came way before she existed—"  
"Congratulations, Mr. Griffith," a new voice comes from somewhere across the churchyard. "The Regent witch of New Orleans. How grand."  
Six feet echo and get lighter as they near the position where Vincent directs his glance.  
"Nice to meet you, Mr. De Martel, I've heard a lot about you," monotonous, Vincent greets his guests.  
"You know, I never liked churches. They're full of fables. Guardian angels, patron saints... But cemeteries, cemeteries I don't detest. They prove not one of those things can save you from the inevitable," Tristan states.  
Vincent comes down off the steep stairway to the Ancestral Mausoleum, walking towards the vampires.  
"Yeah. I hear the Strix has been watchin' me. Somebody keeps telling the witches about my relationship to Jezebel. Well, let me save you the trouble, I'm no easy target for you to manipulate. And I'm sick and tired of the _trash_ the Originals bring to town. Now, normal people can't get one over on vampires, but for hell's sake, I will. You can keep your eyes on us all you like, but we're looking right back at you," Vincent asserts, adjusting the crooked of Tristan's designer tie.  
His buddies nearly step up to his defense, but Tristan wards them off with a single hand.  
"A frenzied witch without a fear of vampires. You are one in a million, my friend. Just remember: knowledge is power. You cannot defy what you do not know," cryptically, Tristan gives his goodbye.  
Vincent lets them walk away without a word.  
I beat Tristan back to his awaiting Escalade, leaning against the passenger door to prevent him from slamming it in my face.  
"We've got a problem," I sigh.  
"Surely, nothing that can't be fixed without me, Marcellus?" Tristan hopes. "My sister's due for her relocation by early morning. I must attend to her before I get her on a plane to Bahli."  
I stop his wingman's hand right as it touches on the latch of the passenger door.  
"Jezebel Zhukov is gone," I sigh.  
Tristan frowns. "What?"  
His servant rips his hand away from mine.  
I excuse it, "I went to the cemetery today where she would meet Klaus. I saw the witches with her vinyl. They snapped it right in half. And then into a couple more halves. She crumbled like a pile of bricks."  
"Why didn't you stop them!" Tristan growls. "Oh, we're doomed."  
"She's dead, isn't that a good thing? You said it yourself, she's a flare for unwanted guests to follow," I pray I did the right thing.  
Tristan backs me away from the door.  
"She was going to save us! Now, we're fair game. Do you wish to die at the hands of people like herself Marcellus? Because that is what is to happen next!" Tristan howls.  
I'm speechless seeing the Count De Martel in a cold sweat, stuttering for his careful words.  
"We'll talk about this in the morning," he exhales heavily, jumping into his car.  
I'm restricted from coming close to the car by his men, who walk alongside it and pick up speed as soon as it gets speed.  
In a daze of confusion and worst-case scenarios, I've got nothing left to do but go home and urge the universe to forget what it knew about me.


	9. Kiss of Judas

**TRISTAN**

I could feel the brass pocket watch Aurora had given me long ago ticking away against my loose grip. I hate knowing that each time I return home, she'll be broiled down into a sleepy slur of a girl missing out on her life. Some nights, I feel responsible and others I feel like a mediator. There's always going to be an Aurora with a heart of gold buried beneath an Aurora with a mind of glass shards. I don't know when I might see her again, but when this is all over, I'll join her in India and hope that heart of gold greets me.  
A harsh bump in the road distracts me from deep thought as the driver suddenly begins making a detour through the bayou's unmarked trail.  
"Turn around. Try to stay on course, no detour will get us there fast enough," I order tiredly.  
The chauffeur does not return a nod or an agreed word. He does not acknowledge me at all.  
"I said _turn around_ ," with more aggression, I command.

The car stops abruptly in the cerulean darkness, the highbeams of the SUV shutting off and leaving us both in the dark. I can hear crickets and nothing more until the driver with less hurry than before removes himself from the vehicle and opens my door.  
I step out, thinking Aya may have had other plans than to meet at the Strix's rental. I am out of luck for such comfortable reasoning.  
Seven cloaked figures stand among a grove of cypresses and uncertain death is on the air with a bitter taste.  
One of the figures speaks in a clumsy and acidic tone, though I do not know which one or what language it is.  
"...I don't believe I know what this is about. But I assure you, you've picked an hour that isn't convenient for either of us," I appeal. "You are the Knot, no? My name is Tristan De Martel; I'm a friend of your fugitive's."  
There's no time for introduction. Two of the cloaks bring me to my knee's with a powerful grip and hold me.  
Two of the last five trade off a metal box that gleams in the moonlight.  
"I can bring her to you!" I promise aloud. "If you agree to let me get back in the car, I can—"  
"It's too late, and you know this," the english-speaking of the the group tells me. "Celeste had plans for you long before that girl returned to this place. Show obedience, and we can promise you life further."  
"It's not me you want! It's Jezebel! You need her to be able to achieve the whole of your kind—!"  
The box opens in the middle of my speech, and out shoots a dark object I have only enough time to feel swim down my throat and choke me into unconsciousness.

 **VINCENT**

"You know, only a guilty party would be as silent as you are now. Show yourselves," I bellow.  
The graveyard stays as silent as its dead. Candles are lit, the night is young, and there are little feet running around in the distance waiting for a boogeyman to scare them away.  
"I'm not gonna ask again," I scold.  
Van reveals himself, ritualistic knife and rabbit in hand.  
"You're kind of a joke now, you know. A guy who hasn't done magic for years and is in talks with the enemy? What good will you do us?" Van taunts me.  
I exhale heavily, "Well, here's the thing about Jez. You only stopped her for a while. That girl learns quick and pretty soon she's going to find a loophole to come back. Where did you think you were going with that, huh?"  
"I encouraged it, I don't take responsibility for it. The ancestors have wanted her gone for decades. At least somebody had the guts to finish the job," he continues.  
Grabbing his armed hand, I pin it back against the door of a nearby crypt and use my free arm to pin his chest.  
"Who thieved the vinyl, Van? Jez came in peace, that's the first thing she tried to tell us. So, if the witches acted against a neutral force, then the ancestors—"  
He interrupts, "Typical, even you'd blame it on the coven. I don't mean to bulldoze the lecture you have prepared for us, but we are not gonna take the credit."  
I dropped him to his numb feet, intaking the information I've come into.  
I frown, "Then who?"  
Van admits, "Marcel. It was Marcel Gerard."

 **AYA**

He's late. How convenient, given he said his news was an emergency. I feel as though I've been waiting with the witches he needed for hours. Vincent Griffith has been roped into making a new vessel for the Pythoness as week speak, though, he's inclined to get her on it and watch after it himself. He can do as he pleases, so long as he doesn't get in our way when the time comes to protect our sires by giving that girl up.  
I sigh, staring out the window of Marcel Gerard's home base in his absence. Perhaps, Tristan has whisked him away in the swing of a mayday. What if Marcel is the emergency? Dammit. I should have gone to that cemetery last night.  
"She fought valiantly, but alas, she isn't entirely suited to outlast a second dose of morphine. We've put her on the drive to Baton Rouge airport as it suits you. She expects a call before she gets on the plane, though, I wouldn't expect a fully intelligent or long conversation. Where are you?" I aggressively assert in Tristan's voicemail.  
Footsteps with an assertive tap to them come up behind me where I am faced with Marcel himself.  
"Tristan's chauffeur called. He never made it back from Kingmaker the other night," Marcel states.  
"If that were right, I would have gotten a call long before you. And since you suffer from an indifference to the current Regent of the nine covens as well as a one-sided eye-witness account to the pythoness's demise, who's to say it's not you who's behind his disappearance?" I interrogate.  
Marcel takes a seat on the nearby couch.  
"It's only been eighteen hours, he's not a missing person yet. Try Lucien Castle again, and you'll have better luck with an answer instead of just pointing fingers. This isn't a dignified witch hunt. Speaking of, I need to talk to you about this," he replies.  
Tossing a vivid folder onto the glass table before me, he gestures at it.  
"I had a look at the file Tristan told me to give the Mikaelsons if they didn't surrender Jezebel Zhukov. I'm not an avid Spanish speaker, but I do recognize names. Is this a letter to Mikael Mikaelson?" I frown.  
"On the contrary. A letter from Mikael addressed to Jezebel Zhukov herself. As it seems, she's good at more than just attracting evil. She can befriend it just as easily. One look at that, and they'll send her straight into our hands," I answer.  
Marcellus theorizes, "Let me guess, to spite the witch realm and turn her _into_ the weapon?"  
"Don't be daft. She's not the weapon, but she's valuable in this game of ruler and killer. Or was," I sigh.  
He shifts to stand again.  
"...You don't know what Tristan wants from her, do you?" he realizes.  
If I did, I'd be a lot more concerned than this right now. I can't explain what I don't know to the people who believe I'm their leader's eyes and ears, so how can I answer him?  
Stubbornly I choose to reply, "It's not your job to worry what's to happen next. So long as we survive, you survive. Do not question how. Just be grateful."  
It doesn't keep him at bay, but I am done talking.  
I cut him off from the last word, "Make yourself useful. Get out there and help find Tristan. Ariane!"  
Out from the dark of the halls comes my hired witch, Ariane, and her sisters.  
"Your mom know you're helping us out, Ariane?" Marcellus recognizes the local.  
"Since when does Marcel Gerard care about my kind? Let alone my well-being. You heard Aya. It's time to remove yourself," Ariane calmly replies.  
He hasn't the time to worry for her as much as for himself. Tristan is the only one who wants him here; he best find the man vouching for his trustworthiness before Marcel is left to our trials of judgment.  
As he pitifully looks over the teenager and her friends, he leaves the room and lets us continue our work.  
"Now, what news is it you have for me?" I huff.  
"We've been monitoring Freya Mikaelson's activity like you asked. As of now, she's attempting a spell to find the Pythoness," one of Ariane's girls swear.  
I ponder, "I imagine she's been found if you're coming to me this early in the process."  
"Not exactly. Jezebel found the weapon you require," Ariane exposes.

 **ELIJAH**

There's no telling what he's waiting for. Across the street, he sits like a show pony waiting for a prize at a small Bourbon café. Is he waiting for one of us to walk away from our haven or is he simply planning on calling a meeting in plain sight?  
A group of dark-haired women in dark clothing ascends from the alleyway, walking in a clean line as they make eye contact with him and he with them. Perhaps, a trade's already happened. If Alexis the Seer foresaw a weapon, there was still no telling who had it or what it was. "It" is liable to be a "who" just as well. Witches are terribly bland with information.  
Freya grunts in frustration in the room behind me.  
"Any luck?" I ask.  
"There's no trace of her whatsoever. I've tried seance, locator spells, descent hexes...none of it applies. It's like Jezebel doesn't exist," Freya huffs.  
I look at the materials she has to work with as I pace over to her. A shard of the vinyl we found in the graveyard and an old portrait of our dead most likely on loan from Niklaus.  
Jezebel didn't want to be found. She said it once or twice before and now she was going to prove it.  
"I don't know if it's because I'm a different form of magic or if someone got to her first...the strongest way is to have some form of live representation. She's too tidy to even leave a hair on the floor, apparently," Freya laments.  
As something directly created or born from the girl herself. Maybe it is I who's been too tidy to come forward.  
I raise my hand as a gesture for her patience while I retrieve her a plausible instrument to help the search along.  
Up in the garret of the house, I anxiously look over my shoulder for a witness while I lift Rebekah's chest of forgotten vestments off of a safe I never spoke the combination of.  
Turning it a few times with frustrated and trembling hands, it swings open and gently hits my leg in protest of my rush.  
I detest to admit to my siblings that I have a trunk of "souvenirs" myself; in fact, I'm dropped most of them out in the Atlantic while voyaging from continent to continent. But this one was the one I could never part with. It was the toy chest that kept me in mind of what I do for this family.  
My hand wraps around the sweet smell of yellowed paper and unintelligible stories crossed between Jezebel's world and that of the finest medicine men of the South. She claimed she was perfecting her speech through such advanced pieces, but the inside told a different story.  
I flipped through the pages, watching her writing become more and more smudged and brief than the pages before. Drawings, plans, graphs, diagrams... It all becomes less detailed by the end of the mammals' anatomy chapter. I don't think even she realized what she was trying to find or recollect.  
I set it next to my sister's hand, praying for her to skip the inevitable part of opening it up.  
"What is this?" she asked.  
"Something she left behind," I answer vaguely, "Do you think—"  
The candles on the table turn blue the second Freya puts it at the center of her work.  
"That's a good sign. Give me your hand," Freya requests.  
Keeping a standing position, I lend her my hand as she places her other over the book and begins a chant.  
" _Liro frans sec de tum, unus por dahv shen liro frans sec de tum..."_ repeats Freya.  
The book flips open and lets the evaporating aged ink splash upward against her wrist and coil itself around her limb like a serpent.  
When it stops circling, Freya breaks her concentration and turns her arm over.  
"...Quick. Your handkerchief," Freya demands.  
I stir it from my pocket, whipping it to keep the fabric from wrinkling the original design she intends to copy. Taking it gently, she presses it to the quickly evaporating red fluid and capturing its rust-smelling phantasm.  
When she surrenders it to me, I am surprised my eyes do not address a message but a picture.  
"It's a knight," I mutter.  
"...That doesn't make sense. Are you sure that's her book?" Freya mutters. "Is she telling us where she is? A grave marker maybe?"  
She wasn't a precious loss, I always thought, just another body to burn in a dumpster or leave in a ditch. All grudges aside, I knew it had nothing to do with Jezebel at all. It may not have made sense to Freya, but it certainly did to me. I _watched_ our brother carve that knight.  
"Even if I weren't aware of it, I think this may be the clearest answer we've gotten from the dead thus far," I state. "I know what the deadly weapon is."

 **VINCENT**

I see him rushing into the LaVeau graveyard and without hesitation, I give him the full effect of my excitement. Pushing him into the crypt, I don't care who watches or how he'll fight back.  
"What the hell is wrong with you, man!" I bark. "I know she gave you a scare, but you didn't have to go and kill her!"  
"From the sound of it, I only shut her down for a little while. Don't start acting like I committed the crime of all crimes," Marcel retorts, shoving me back.  
"But you could have. See, the majority of people around here might be throwin' a party, but that can change when I get them to see Jezebel has all the answers. The Knot is a lot stronger than the Strix, Marcel, and this sireline war has a little more to do with them than you realize. We're talking about a group of witches who are evil enough to be left out of history," I lecture.  
"Then why are we protecting their most wanted!" Marcel barks.  
To avoid unwanted ears, I take him between a couple of smashed up graves that haven't seen attention in years.  
"Jezebel's only wanted because she knows how to stop them. But she's not going to tell anyone that because the second the Mikaelsons make it their problem, they toss all other reasoning out the window and shoot for complete destruction. Don't you think that will make Tristan's agenda a lot more complicated and hastened than before?" I prove.  
Marcel's navy hood rustles on his back as he moves away from me irritably.  
He sighs, "Well, that's why I'm here. Tristan De Martel's been missing since last night; no one can tell what happened between the time he left Kingmaker and this morning. Do any of your disciples have an idea what might have happened?"  
"They won't even tell me, so I'll have to do a locator spell. In the mean time, you might wanna keep a few things to yourself. You're not on a mutual team, you never were," I huff. "Come on."  
Marcel gradually strolls after my unavailable strut.  
"Didn't think it'd be that easy to get you to do anything for me," Marcel scoffs.  
It isn't for Marcel, it's for me. Tristan was the only thing standing in the way of the Strix getting their hands on my community and now they're walking in here and recruiting young kids for their own gain. I'm not gonna have it.  
Marcel readily has a tie for me to use as a tether when we enter the Claire mausoleum.  
Using the stored ashes and a map, I prepare to shed the catalytic blood that will locate our missing guy. A tension builds up in my throat and my arms as soon as I speak the spell, my mind trying to stay as blank as it can be.  
Something happens before I can complete the first line of my chant. A pure white wind pushes me out of concentration and onto the floor next to the altar.  
Marcel does not hesitate to help me up and question me immediately.  
"What happened?" he frowns.  
"I was pushed out of the spell," I pant.  
"What does that mean?" Marcel guesses.  
It means timing is precious and we failed at its care. I'm looking for a vampire who no longer lives.

 **KLAUS**

The thick emerald binding hasn't lost color; it's been kept in a safe place all these years—away from bookshelves or coffee tables or human hands in general.  
Jezebel had a specific fascination with mortal sciences and nature. She never talked about it or expressed interest in using it to govern her future, though, it was a good match for her cleverness and quick wit. Most souls spend their lives dedicated to a single profession, and still, I believe they would never master anything as thoroughly as she did.  
She was savvy with medicine and finance, an excellent gambler, occasional artist, and hunter. It was refreshing and ironic how she could have been written into this place by an author of great tragedies or a glamorized dark age poet. She always said she'd much rather write her own sorrows down than read about others'. If she hadn't been so intimidated by crowds and attention, she would have been the most popular girl in New Orleans.  
People do change...but some merely have two faces. I'm not entirely sold on the concept of opening this book and seeing the difference.

Elijah leans in the distant doorway, stiffly observing me turn the item over in my hands.  
"...Did you open it?" he queries.  
"If I do, I'll pay the price in some form or another," I foretell. "Judging by the look on your face, you were awaiting for me to say something about what's in here. What importance it must have to you that you should keep it in this house for this long."  
He clears his throat quietly, shifting back onto two feet and coming to sit by me and my wine glass.  
"...I knew things about her that I shouldn't have. Maybe it was my knowledge that made her act so impulsively in the end. My plans were to give it to you and hope you'd keep faith that what Jezebel did to you were explainable. But the longer time went on here and how slowly our bond had molded back together, I chose to let it sit in the dark," Elijah mutters apologetically, "If recovering from Aurora was as difficult as it was for a tale of similar telling, I'd feel guilty rehashing the issue. I could have stopped Jezebel from betraying you, but I did not. I thought it was fair to let you learn...as I had with Celeste. But really I just let it steep..."  
Time doesn't heal like explanations do, and I was depraved of so many. Elijah and Rebekah both knew Jezebel was a witch long before I loved her; I had no warnings or honesty from my own family or from her.  
"I never asked her why. I always hoped I misinterpreted," I said with a scoff.  
As if it would matter. I was hard on Jezebel after the death of the Devereaux's. I threatened her life one too many times,  
Was it all an act of vengeance? I did us a favor by killing Celeste. She was a lot easier to stop covered in a sheet than in human skin.  
It was a period in which our castle walls were too narrow for more than the three of us. How could he forget it?  
The book jingles. I shake it gently and stare down the gap between the binding and the leather binding. Something glimmers in the dim light coming from behind us. I pull at the yellow ribbon that sinks down into the pit of the book like a rope and pull out a ring. Made of sterling silver, the large M engraved in its band beneath cherubs and burning hearts still shines as brilliantly as when it could have been new.  
I can't yank it entirely from its casing because there is an opposing red ribbon tied to it. I tug it harshly and hear a page fold inside.  
Elijah observes as I turn the book open to the sound's source, a bright red pressed flower in the way of the major text written like an overlay to the dissection of man.  
My heart skips a beat as I try move it aside and find three crisp words practically carved into the tender stack of pages. Family. Friend. Foe.  
"It can't be," I swallow.  
Elijah takes the book for context, his avid fast-reading skills helping us learn more in less time.  
" 'I met the girl who should complete the three evils, but she does not yet know me. I have to find a way to break free of this place and warn her...before Niklaus is made fourth...' This isn't Jezebel, this is Kol!" Elijah cries.  
Setting the book aside he stands quickly, and without warning, he leaves me in awe inside the gold and copper themed main den.  
Going after him, I growl, "What is it? What are you doing!"  
"Freya used that book in order to contact Jezebel. Maybe she didn't, and she contacted Kol instead. He knew of the weapon that could kill us once and for all!" Elijah panics.  
"You found it! Then you know what it is, why have we not gone after it!" I scold.  
He begins turning books and chests and drawers inside out.  
He reassures, "Because it is right here in this house. And it's been there in your hands...where's the knight, Niklaus?"

My mind wraps around the small knight I'd carved centuries ago, just sitting in the library and waiting to be seen. It still wreaks of the white oak tree that it came from and even continues to draw gnats looking for sap. How could I have been so absentminded?  
I hurry in the opposite direction my hand jetting outward as soon as it passes the doorframe. It lands on the third shelf up where mother's grimoire sits in a spell lock in the empty spot where the knight is supposed to be.

My heart goes form a skip to a sprint, my neck and chest heaving like rip tides. Elijah's loose cell phone nearly jolts me out of my skin when it sings two simple and out of tune notes.  
It's a message from an unknown number, blinking with urgency.

 **He was the last thing standing in the way. Prepare for the arrival. Our condolences.**  
 _unknown (read, 9:56 pm)_

 **AYA**

The unbearable news of Tristan is investigated and served to be correct. Ariane's immediate seance after Marcel's discovery is met with Tristan himself, who now lays confined to the Serratura itself. Nothing has been said of what we plan to do next, or where his body may be. No matter, he would demand that we keep on task.  
"...Whatever it was, Elijah clearly wants it to remain hidden. So long as it is out there, all our lives are at risk. We will not rest until that weapon is under out control," I announce to the group, looking at Marcel over my shoulder, "...It's what Tristan would want. Thus I will not tolerate any protest of the further agenda!"  
A polite voice chimes in, "Hello everyone. Wonderful to see you all under the circumstances, of course."  
Elijah parades into the room of dying winter light, tossing his fine coat aside like laundry in his own house.  
"My condolences on the unforeseen death in the family. I'm sure Tristan is eloquently missed," Elijah muses.  
His eyes land on my irritable gaze.  
"Aya," he chirps, "how cozy we appear to be leading Tristan's abandoned circus. But sadly, one does not ascend to the position of leader—it kind of has to be by my consent."  
I aggressively roll his hands off of my leather sheathed shoulders. He takes them away voluntarily as he paces my corner. I look at Marcel from the corner of my eye for a reaction. Does he smile like a traitor or frown like an oppressed fool?  
Elijah goes on, "You see, I am the founding father of you all. I get to choose the leader here, and unfortunately for every last one of you, I've already chosen a candidate. Today is the day I take back what is mine. Objections anyone?"  
Silence is heard, given there isn't much time to answer.  
"When all of you consent, it is my opportunity to return you to greatness!" Elijah preaches.  
Marcel remarks suddenly, "Really? just gonna come in here and start making demands?"  
He is shushed by Elijah almost immediately.  
Marcel is belittled by Elijah, "Marcel, the grownups are speaking. Aya! Tell me how long it's been since you saw _this._ "  
Like a magician he unravels the coat he's tossed upon the window seat and reveals an eight-centuries-old scroll with handles I myself engraved to frame his charter.  
"The Charter of the Strix...who would even think to write this? Oh, yes. Me. Now, as it says here...'it shall be my duty to uphold the tenants of the charter', _da-ta-da-ta-da_...oh, this is important. 'In the absence of a worthy leader, the charter will be invoked and dominion shall be restored to Elijah Mikaelson'."  
Proudly and with feigned exhaustion, he tosses his work onto the small chair once more. Under no circumstance will I accept. Some of these vampires are not old enough to reject him alongside me. It's been long enough that no one remembers his neglect like I do except what would have been Tristan.  
I scoff, "If you desire to stake this absurd claim that you are leader, then I demand the right to _Ludum Regale_."  
"And what would that...'days of yore' term mean, exactly?" Marcel smiles with question.  
Yet, he is only left to wonder.  
"Let's not do this, shall we?" Elijah stubbornly rejects my request.  
I chuckle, "Ah, ah! I know the rules. As it happens, I helped you write them. You cannot invoke one end of the charter and disregard the rest."  
If our leadership is in doubt and politics prove divisive, a contest of strength and cunning shall determine the line of succession.  
"I challenge you, Elijah. Whoever holds the charter at the stroke of midnight is the new lead! Do you accept?" I declare.  
A simper appears on Elijah's face as if the ability to duel me drives a bit of excitement within him. I can't wait to see those pearly fangs on the floor when I walk away leader, once and for all.


	10. Wake Snakes

**JEZEBEL**

 _October 28_

Lightheaded and nauseous, the next morning began where I was feeling unbearably doubtful. I watched the six O'clock fog glide past the steps leading into our dark green house, my nails like tree stumps from the self-imposed stress of what I'd done. Was defeating Celeste so important that I had to call on Death and his pale horse to come and sweep New Orleans away in bloody darkness?

I kept with the thought though I'd tried to shake it away.

It was easy to avoid a massacre if I was the first face Mikael would see. If Kol was right and he can kill Celeste, then I just had to waltz her in front of him somehow and hope he spares me.

"Hope isn't enough," I heard behind me.

Looking to my right, bare toes curling into the dry dirt next to the steps, I met my reflection's deadened glance.

"You _hope_ you haven't just made a big mistake, you _hope_ you can live past this moment, you _hope_ Ángel lived past his... Is that what he taught you. Now's the time to stop praying, because God has given you shit," she monotonously advised.

" _Qué sabes_?" I scowled.

"I know that today isn't going to be your day. You'll hate life and you'll hate yourself. But no matter the soil, you need to start growing. How can you do that without pain?" she answered back.

My hand swept across the splinter of the rickety step and nearly ripped the skin of my palm. I winced, grabbing onto the cut with the concealing sleeve of my opposite hand.

I took my eyes off _la sosia_ I'd been dealing with and began to search for the location of the bloodied splinter.

Three little leaves had sprouted from between the makeshift amends in the aged boards, marking the splinter like circled prey. A few shifts between me and the foundation of the farmhouse caused me to inch back. The little sprouts began to sway side to side, wind being absent and my movements far from being a disturbance. It could have been rodents or the rattle snakes I'd seen slither across the back acres. Maybe there was a chase between the two.

The rapid growth the sprouts into brightly colored blood orange leaves. The lengthy pod which appeared in the middle of the curled petal tongue indicated to me I'd been its magical intervention.

My gaping mouth closed on a short inhale when an opposing voice came from behind me.

"Just the dame I've been looking for! Quite the shoddyocracy of a show you put on recently. Well, now I have a bone to pick with you," Klaus bellowed within the quick strut he made in my direction. I picked my knees up into my chest and drew closer to the front door where I knew he could not pass.

His determined boot stopped against the first step with a harsh tap.

"Why is this about you! You traumatized those children, they could have been orphans!" I battled him with hushed tones.

He replied in a fully outdoor voice, "And that's hardly either of our concerns. Their mothers are likely awaiting the Spring with drooling mouths for their harvests, anyhow! You ought to view it from the positive side. Every child desires a life without rules, to grow up resilient like the heroes in their favorite fairytales. I like to think of it as the gift I give happily!"

Over time, I started to think Nik projected the absence of an effective parent onto his justifications of robbing others of their own happy or well-lived world. Every child was no good in his eyes without the learned lesson of fending for oneself. I understood it eventually, for, I couldn't change his mind about any of it. But in that very first moment he expressed it to me, I was perfectly outraged.

"Damn you!" I growled at him, stepping forward. "You are miserable and you want to make everyone around you miserable, too! I did this out of the last bit of ho— Out of kindness...I had left in me. But I have none for you. I hope you can forgive yourself where no one else is able to. If you were petrified of witches before, you best watch your step because you walk on the ledge of their patience."

His hands rose to each side with a short moment of relief, pacing with me as I tried to remove myself from being in his direct range of moment.

"So you see my dilemma," dramatically sarcastic, he complained, "You've empowered them! And by doing so, you've empowered any other tribe that's ever held a vendetta against me. The werewolves have gotten bright ideas, as well. And should the Guerreras cause a scene tonight, I will label _you_ the cause!" he howled.

That's when I had my epiphany. My father discoursed the Guerreras before. Their crest was as historically rooted in werewolf history as mine; they had to recognize me if only I told them my name.

Caught up in my rambling thoughts and desires, I felt the steep drop off the right side of the porch, catching myself just in time and rendering myself vulnerable to any attack.

"The Guerreras..." I mumbled to myself hastily. "You know them? They are here? Right now?"

As I neared Klaus, his eyes twitched with an opening.

"You have to take me to them," I demanded.

"Hadn't you just mentioned your absence of kindness for me? Do you not agree that is a dual-sided snake, love?" Klaus said.

I shook my head, my eyes burning with twigged red lines and a glaze of its own. My hands latched around his left forearm with a crushing strength as I tried to be civil in my approach to a lowly begging.

"You don't understand, I could go far from here if you tell me how to find them! If they know my name, they would take me back to Middle America and hold me for ransom. They would call on my father for whatever suits their needs, and he'd come to retrieve me. Please. You won't ever hear from me again, neither would the witches. Just do this one thing, and I promise you they won't so much as breathe in your direction when I find them," I spoke in a run-on, retaining a mix of whispers and mutters.

I appeared to be making way with him. He was well aware if he sent me running in his enemy's direction, they'd leave him be.

"You are one to wake snakes as I see it, Jezebel. Or just as bold. If you hadn't misbehaved so I think we could have been friends. Tonight, we host the Hallow's Eve gala at our home. They are always late, as you will be. Have Celeste tag you along. If you aren't gone by sundown, Celeste and her people will experience a black wave you cannot save them from this time around," Klaus instructed.

His arm gently tore away from my near-white grasp. My heart thudded with sudden peace as a tear fell from my eye watching him walk away.

CELESTE

 ** _October 30_**

Sister of mortal tiding. 

We call on you this Hallow's Eve to celebrate our Sabbat and gain our gratitude for the preservation of our offspring.

Witch kind has been in peril since the ocean drained from this land and made way for the construction of New Orleans.

Come alone.

Eterpitum solitudis.

.MDCCCXX

Vicesima tertia.

I slumped against the velvet of my faded peridot armchair in front of the fireplace, my eyes crossing each line again and again. In the pit of my stomach a fire burned, my methane a fatal mixture of wrath and arrogance.

The witches wanted to exclude me from Sabbat so they could conspire with their new obsession, the heart-over-mind messiah. Being officially disowned, I was able to consider the truth of the reason. You could not be a part of a coven when you were the new queen of something bigger and stronger, like the Knot. I was a glutton of opportunity, and I was officially a threat. Should Jezebel have seen the letter that'd been left perched on her windowsill, she would learn to rise from dependency and resist me harder.

So, I found myself preparing for the scenario in which I would pass on before I could deliver the Knot to greatness.

Jezebel's light footstep, descended down the staircase in the unlit darkness of the house, her dark head of hair floating in the moonlight presenting itself through the stained glass of our front entry.

My eyes narrowed upon her staggered step, unlike that of her typical shinning around.

"What do you intend to do?" I heard behind me.

I addressed the reflection of my Knot sister in the mirror on the mantle of the grand fireplace, my fingers dancing around the strings of my corset as I cleared my throat.

"What I do best. I'm going to erase the present and start writing the future, sister," I smiled. "And she looks...a little something like this."

I rose from my seat, approaching the heavy ornate mirror an watching my ringlets elongate into much coarser wavy black weeds of hair, my eyes tingling from change in color and skin prickling from a dense fire that turned melanin into olive.

 **JEZEBEL**

Klaus's deadline went into effect the second I walked into the Mikaelson mansion; as did mine. Already overwhelmed by the crowd of disguises and the stuffy glow of candlelight tripping the drunks, I nearly flinched with irritability when someone brushed passed me.

My reflection stood before the mess I was to walk into and amend, her long dark hair swaying like wine in the glasses of the guests.

"There are three ways to tell a predator from prey. When you see a predator out in the wilderness, it feels like seeing a removed kinsman in your house. You don't know much about them or what they're like, you just know not to be too forward," she began, "Then, you'll recognize they want something from you and vice versa. The dilation of their eyes, their pace, their noises—it's all telling of an exchange or a robbery. Third, they never do anything to be cruel or calculating–all the blood and bone that's been shed before was to keep the body and soul together."

I remarked in front of my reflection, "Who's predator are you?"

She smiled brilliantly as a single, glimmering body of wealth strolled in front of her and made her vanish.

"It's rather rude when the guest of honor is the latest of them all," I heard another converser.

Klaus approached, the pearls of his shark grin fanning the smell of blood and moonshine in my face.

"As I remember it, I was desired to be late," I frowned at him.

He cackled to himself at my confusion by his sarcasm, his fingers dancing around the half empty glass of alcohol in his hand. As two identical women passed between us, their eyes were thrown in opposing directions between Klaus and I. He was shameless in further interaction, the simper on his face almost maniacal.

"Do tell, where is Celeste this evening?" Klaus rejoined our greeting.

"I was supposed to meet her in the Quarter cemetery. The witches wanted to honor me. It shouldn't be long before they realize I'm not coming. Where are they?" I summarized and cut to the point.

"You don't care for small talk, I see. I admire that. I suppose I can skip the niceties," he began. "Until the Guerreras arrive, I don't see why we can't start with a dance. Let's display a case of false forgiveness, shall we?" He purred.

His hand extended to me, to which I address his charming expression with a frown.

Klaus mocked me, "Don't look so nervous. I only bite when it's called for."

 **CELESTE**

(Trigger warning)

As I walked through the multirow of torches and candles glowing a bright emerald just for me, I smiled knowing all their eyes could see was Jezebel. My bare feet stepped on cracks and weeds, welcoming the misfortune they'd all brought upon themselves.

"Welcome, Jezebel," one elderly woman greeted me.

I returned to her a lighter grin than the last, my shoulders slumped back and my hips heavy with confidence as I walked.

I paused at the end of the coven crowd, eyeing each and every woman, occasional man, and child oblivious to the privilege of life they held.

"I'd like to thank you for being so kind tonight. Though, it's a shame Celeste could not be here...I am curious to understand why you would not call on your leader, my family to be here with me," I imitated her quiescent honeyed voice.

"Celeste DuBois was never ours. It was our mistake for believing otherwise. She convenes with a force as ancient as any Original, and a power greater than Hecate," Madame Fargo swore as she stepped forward. "You, be you witch or be you mortal, _you_ are her greatest prize. Our ancestors wish to show you their appreciation for protecting our children from Klaus Mikaelson. Be our sacrifice to them on this night, and you will be indicted into their legion, guiding us from the other side."

Where I thought Jezebel would be the ultimate hostage, I found she was instead a potential saint. They wanted her to be an Ancestor.

I sighed heavily, with a slight smirk.

"Sacrificing me so that Celeste is unable to? How incredibly childish. You give a life to please an unending line of neurotic spirits who take away your freedom to fight back. That is what makes you weak and unworthy of any kindness at all. Once Carmila rises, Celeste will fight to make the dead into slaves of the living. Any witch who stands in the way, was not fit to carry on their family blood. I saved you once. I think I should be in charge of the sacrifice tonight, and I choose...all of you," I smirked.

Shouts of offense and anger and disgust erupted from each corner of this quaint perimeter.

A sharp click ignited where the cobblestone ground start to crack beneath my feet, slivering along in quick fragments and dividing itself like tree branches around the feet of the witches, the ground beginning to cave as my plain feet hovered from the ground and lifted me until I could see the ground beneath me cave and sink down into a sharp abyss.

The mausoleums and heavy grave markers lost foundation and slanted forward crushing handfuls of breakable skulls and leave few to escape out the vaguely rooted pillars that marked the nearest entrance to the cemetery. Screams and quaking and crying roared like wildfires as the earth gave up on Louisiana and let its heart swallow up in full.

"Oh, righteous day," I whispered.

A cry in the distance interrupted my train of thought as I exited the cemetery on flat feet.

"Celeste!" Elijah screamed from down the stone road of the Quarter.

I broke into a hobble, grabbing at my hair to make my eyes water.

Pathetically, I whined loudly, "Elijah!"

He rushed at me, his handsome evening attire sodden with the oncoming downcast and my crocodile tears as I held onto him.

I blubbered, "The witches! They're dead!"

"What has happened!" He cried.

I interjected, "There was a disagreement. Someone destroyed the cemetery from the inside, I barely escaped. I have to find Jezebel. I need to know she's safe!"

He looked around frantically at the glow of fires over on the distant side of the Black Clay and the growing crowd of bystanders, stopping carriages to rubberneck.

"She's at the party with Niklaus. Come. We'll find her," Elijah swore, dragging me away with a shielding arm against the storm.

 **KLAUS**

Passively, she let me lead her through the dance with little to no interest in letting her guard down. There were heads facing away from their partners, like compasses pointing to Jezebel standing at the axis of danger. She didn't notice a thing.

"What you said the other morning. It was about every child wishing to be free from rules. Did you wish for that?" Jezebel amended sincerely.

"I don't believe now is the time to divulge each other in tales of our childhood," I sighed.

"I just want to know because I think you're justification of genocide is interesting," she told me.

Now, she was goading me. She saw where my case had wavered and where I had made a fool of myself originally.

"If you mean to rehash an anecdote from my book of faults, let's not leave yours out of sight and out of mind. The way you speak, love, it's similar to that of a man who fools himself into thinking he is the bigger person. You mean to tell me that you have never done anything rash or within the arms of paranoia?" I twisted the conversation.

Her gaze dropped without the slightest movement of her head.

"That's right," I leaned in, speaking into her ear, "Come down from your humble stage and remember. You have made mistakes and perhaps, they've made you unpopular. Yet, you live. Sparing you my last bit of patience, I'll offer you this last piece of wisdom. What you are doing here tonight—I think it's just another one of those ugly mistakes."

Jezebel swallowed, exhaling calmly.

She replied, "...Unlike you, I have no room to let the mistake go to waste."

She drew her head away from mine, eyes latched onto the view over my shoulder as her grasp released from mine at the end of the song.

With a bored exhale, she watched one of the taller Guerrera folk recently arriving raise his glass to her gaze.

My hand travelled a short distance to reach and wrap around her forearm.

"At least here in New Orleans, we're not neglectful of mercy. There is nothing to be said about survivors in the hands of wolves like those," I warned her.

Without returning my glance, Jezebel responded, "You didn't give me sympathy. You just know you will lose to me. Perhaps, that will teach you to be less proud, Niklaus."

She took her arm away, walking straight into the arms of catastrophe as she greeted the Guerrera with a polite hand on his back. After a mere second of greeting, I witnessed a stupefying pause between the two figures. The Guerrera's charming grin was gone and Jezebel's face is expression colder than the crescendo of a new waltz.

With the flick of his hand he sent away his brothers, stuck with the girl who spoke quickly and with aggression on her full lips.

His hand wrapped around one of hers, as he patted it patronizingly. The confidence in her façade was quick to disperse as he spoke quietly to her, shaking his head and eating away at her hardly given proposition.

Rebekah strolled to my side, grabbing at my forearm.

"Elijah's nowhere to be found. I suppose I'll have to do with you as my next partner. Though, you can't keep pace for the life of you," she pouted.

Her eyes followed mine to where the Guerrera stood talking to Jezebel as intimately as I just had been, and with less vigor as the start of the conversation. Jezebel's head slowly turned to the side as she took her hand away, face deadened as if every nerve had snapped and made her numb in an instant.

Without much more context, he watched her walk out the front door and left the scene.

"What's happening there? Did she finally get a taste of her own medicine?" Rebekah sighed.

"So it would seem," I hesitated.

 **JEZEBEL**

I had a dream once as a child. I was laying in bed on the morning of my fifteenth birthday. I stretched my arm upward, pretending to take down the stars. Then, the cobalt ceiling cracked. It imploded, and behind it, I did not see sky nor heaven; not space, not death, not hell—just the color black. What was special about this dream was nothing of its obscure storytelling. It was that my eyes were open when I'd had it.

And there I was, experiencing it again. But this time, it was the ground that was black and sucking up into itself, leaving me afloat.

I couldn't shed a tear. I couldn't take a breath or blink. At one point, I thought I might dispell what little I had to eat that day, but the feeling was fleeting. I sat on the side of the loud, bright mansion, the drizzle in the sky coming down on top of my head.

The clap of thunder and lightning made the entire house bump with drunken delight.

My chest heaved, heated up, and danced with ticklish bugs of despair. My eyes fell away into the dark horizon, shining with rainfall and colorless trees framing the broad shoulders of an audience.

The tall stranger got closer and closer until he was upon me with observance of pure disgust.

"What are you doing here?" I croaked.

The blonde giant slowed the removal of a silver dagger from the holster up his waist.

"I was summoned by a pathetic demi-witch by the likes of the Zhukov name," Mikael declared, "Carmila had no maternal gifts, otherwise told by the cowardice radiating off her kin right now."

He only made everything I was feeling worse. I catapulted myself to my feet, clumsily catching myself with a forearm pressing off the side of the home.

I snapped, "I did not summon you to talk to me with such vulgar familiarity! Celeste is at the farmhouse down the road, prepped and sitting for her slaughter. If you walk in there without first committing to her annihilation, I will make you regret uttering my family name!"

Calmly but with a vexed flex in his jaw, the Destroyer put the tip of his dagger to the top of my left breast where he could gather my heartbeat.

"I heard your bark loud and clear when you invaded my head! And the only way I can truly defeat the woman you seek is to assassinate my descendants that remain on this imbalanced earth. If she cannot have them, she cannot win. Only then, when she has felt her defeat, will I slay her and her demons," he hissed back.

I pushed away his dagger, the raindrops falling and slipping down our heads breaking into a briefer and heavier pat. The more frequent claps of thunder nearly drowned me out.

I rose my tone, "Still, it's so imperative that you must make the death of your only children into the reason for you to make the balance right again? Celeste and her her Knot are always going to find a way—"

Mikael swore, "I will not unpack my reasons to you, wench. You cannot stop me here—"

Grabbing his coat, I disguised my left hand which swam beneath his coat to retrieve the dagger.

"You do owe me explanation! Celeste has a plan and I don't think it can be stopped by the murder of the Mikaelson children! Especially Klaus. Tell me now, or suffer your error with me!" I exclaimed.

He shoved me away, and I hid the dagger in the side of my skirt's red hemming.

Mikael warned, "Stay out of my way or suffer as a casualty and nothing more!"

I blinked against an adjacent lightning bolt over the nearby bayou brush, and he was gone.

Sodden, I felt my hair gain the weight of the storm and loosen the pins in my hair, weighing me down with a sodden gown.

I pulled the silver dagger out from behind me, examining it with pulsating hands struggling to stay still.

"Jezebel..." I heard.

Elijah, wallowing in fear and loathing, steps out from behind the house as calmly as he can.

"Give it to me," he said cautiously.

I could not form a complete sentence, my combination of emotions handicapping me and closely formulating me into a ticking explosive.

His ruffle-cuffed hand slowly extended, his step rocking in one spot to see if I'd surrender the weapon by his illusion of coming closer.

I shook my head pathetically.

"No. This isn't safe with anyone," I swallowed.

He retorted, "That is not for you to decide. That thing is a deadly device, and it will hurt anyone in that house...including my family. I can overlook you calling on Mikael, but first, you need to give it to me."

The swollen and nauseating feeling in my stomach and throat defined that I'd been caught. Being caught by Elijah meant I felt trapped.

He could outrun, he could smell me, he could catch me, and he could kill me if I thought about fleeing with that dagger.

"I'm trying to help you, I swear it," my voice quivered. "Please. Go inside."

Elijah amplified his voice to be above mine, "Jezebel it is not an option. Now, before I do something I regret!"

With one quick strike, I lodged the dagger in his heart, my teeth clamping down on my tongue. He quaked with a rush of pain, mouth ajar and choking as he turned white as the moon.

I did not bother apologizing or promising a better tomorrow. If he was a true Original, this would only stop him for so long and he'd deliver me my dues when he woke. I'd clearly crossed a line, Celeste would be dead, and both of us were going to pay for our actions as though we were actual family.

 **CELESTE**

 ** _(Trigger warning)_**

He was a masked man tonight, but his prominent walk of a gigantic ape and unmistakable shape of mouth made him my walking target.

The oblivious siblings, absent of Elijah's oversight, were gazelles at the water's edge for their looming crocodile parent. I took matters into my own hands.

" _Departe_ ," I chanted in singularity.

The crowded ballroom froze like a lake in winter's jaws, except for the few icebergs which floated freely unaffected by their shared magical immunities.

Mikael turned to face the Knot, caution in his eyes and actions, knowing he was outnumbered.

"So, it seems I underestimated the number of you left behind by your mother duck," he scowled.

The rest of my sisters removed their animal masks, prompting him to remove his skeletal disguise.

"What are you doing here Mikael? You know better to step onto the same soil from which you were excommunicated," I purred.

Mikael scoffed, "You mean to compile me into the same ring of punishment as my wife? Esther might have betrayed Carmila, but your response was far from justified."

"Your wife stole immortality from our Knot!" I screamed at him.

"And your Knot stole my son! Henrik!" Mikael boiled. "And I reap not only the consequences of what Esther had the ability to do to my children, but the responsibility to avenge my young boy, as well. If that means I must kill my children to erase your plot, so be it. Here we are! Why don't we settle this before they run for the hills."

"Gladly," I smiled.

I raise my fist to his eye level, his eye sockets bursting into flame and skin slacking off his bone like a roasted pig. He wailed in terror, unable to stop it with the magical defense around his neck and his left ring finger. Falling to his knees, my heart thumped with excitement in seeing the nuisance literally crash and burn. The others chanted a rhythmic dead language to intensify the pain and suffering of the Destroyer, unable to control their occasional cackles and hungry noises.

A burst of lightning suddenly struck through the ceiling, right between Mikael and myself. It broke a fragment of the sterling silver crownings of the Mikaelsons' cathedral ceilings, causing it first to swing by a wedge of sturdy wood fixturing.

We all watched as it swung wide until it began to fall freely, taking the restraints on the glass chandelier with it. The chainlinks spinning away from their golden axis swam through the room at a sharpened speed, the chandelier catching fire on flammable persons and objects lying about the room.

I teleport to a higher place beside the frozen Mikaelsons. The clap of thunder in concert came again, knocking on the door with the sodden Jezebel, panting in a rage.

"She looks like she wants a fight. Finally. The night is upon us sisters. Push her into submission," I declared.

Jezebel watched, troubled, as the slain sisters of the Knots rose from their bloody death beds, retaining a completed physique with the help of their blood magic.

Her hand flew out the side an empty loveseat nearby pinning Nadia and Flora to the wall and applying pressure until the crack of bones sounded just the same as the thunderstorm. Shards from the chandelier rose from the floor and out of injured guests who had yet to wake up from another dimension.

It was a miracle to see her move along with her craft, but less so when the Mikaelsons were in the crossfire and without the means to defend themselves.

The chandelier's fragments struck between the eyes of Lydia and Marin, A handful of bystanders receiving the better have of them to the throat and chest. Their blood splashed against Jezebel's neck and chest, though it did little to stop her from carnaging the entire room.

Another bolt of lightning struck down through the readymade hole from the first strike. The golden chandelier chain flailed and seizured with life, swinging wide until half the public room was halved like a harvested wheat field.

Reneé and Saoirse remained the last to stand in Jezebel's line of fire. They did not want to move.

One rotation in her wrist snapped the spines of the last witches and Mikaelson guests, and then she was coming for me.

"Stop," I calmly commanded.

Jezebel refused, the charged and flickering gold chains swinging their tails high like venomous snakes.

" _Apparit saveti_ ," I hissed below my breath, my hand waving out to the side and freezing where my muscles locked with power.

A harsh coughing and sounds of a scared mammal came from my left.

Jezebel obeyed me upon the sight of Kol, bound like a puppet, bloodied and tongue shriveled like a dried berry.

"See no evil, speak no evil...you know what comes next. I'm rather glad he can still hear me. So he knows how you choose to move against me. Your actions reflect his consequences," I haphazarded her.

Her voice graveled with rage, "What's the matter? I thought you intended to fight for my subordination in good health and in good death."

I step closer, daring her to make a move.

"Indeed. So you may as well strike me, but we _both_ don't want that to happen. You kill me here and now, you expose yourself. You've killed most of the guests, you've killed my witches; Kol, Elijah and Mikael suffer under your precious provisions. You _are_ the enemy of the Mikaelsons in all this. And your father cannot rescue you from your deserved fate...god rest his soul," I growl.

I used her moment of quiet hesitation to subdue her from behind, teleporting behind her to grab her hair and force her down like a rabbit in a hat, into the puddle of blood beneath our feet.

My pythons rise from their nest of carnage and their reborn ears await my command.

"Chain the hybrid, I trust wherever you bury his siblings is a fair punishment. Go. Now," I demanded.

"The Destroyer, Celeste. He'll wake," one of them warned me.

"Let him. There's far less he can do where his children are concerned," I howled.


	11. Wake Snakes part II

**REBEKAH**

When I opened my eyes I was somewhat less comfortable than before. My back and neck were stiff, my feet tired. It was dark and quiet except for a little chatter outside. We were just as a party... Perhaps, I'd been drinking too much or was lodged in the aftermath of more than four glasses.

Nik lit a match quite close to where I'd been standing and startled me upon making the noise that lit the nearby candelabra.

"...How long have we been standing up here? Is the party over?" I questioned warily.

He grabbed my arm and led me down the steps with such haste I could have slipped on the slippery marble steps.

I choked on my breath when the firsdt thing I saw was the body of Madame Clavelle, severed in half at the waist and dead. There were others of the same fate.

"Tell me you saw who did this," Klaus spoke anxiously and disgusted.

I couldn't tell him so. I felt like I'd blinked myself into a dream.

"...My god...are they all...?"

Klaus's difficult and bewildered gaze told me he had a very probable theory.

"We have to find Elijah. Whoever did this was not alone. Sister, this is witchcraft!" He bellowed.

On the last syllable of his phrase, he held his tongue in a fold. He'd stepped farther and farther into my depth of field until I could see half the carnage in his handheld lighting. I cupped my mouth, slightly in awe of the silence I'd witnessed so many times before. One never gets used to seeing this sort of massacre, no matter if it's their doing.

Then, Klaus stepped on something that'd gained his attention. I watched him bend down and pick it up, tossing it away upon realization. It was a black skeletal mask from what I could make of it.

"What is it?" Frightened, I questioned.

No answer.

"Nik!" I screeched for a reply.

"...Father. He's here," Klaus uttered.

My face heated like a furnace upon words spoken, my torso rigid with the electric shock of flight. It wasn't until the shock became real that my mind truly stopped working with me and moved against me. It had gone blank. So had my vision.

"Rebekah!" Klaus had shouted last over a clap of footsteps behind me.

 **KLAUS**

Off in the darkness, Rebekah was forced to her knees by the disabling touch of a dagger through her heart. I could see its glimmering metal tongue peaking through the moonlit teal of her apparel.

"No!" I inwardly screamed.

The culprit that sought my sister's demise stepped into the light, made of three heads and six feet. They all had the same dark hair and lovely complexion, crippled by thin black cracks and jagged pupils like demented dolls.

However, I hadn't the time to go within ten feet of her assailant.

A searing sensation sprouted from the center of my spine. My loud groan bounced off the cold walls of our home, scraping the porcelain decor within the house as a fork would. I hunched over, my head in my whitening hands, wondering if the crushing of my skull would be the most helpful remedy. Something was breaking within me, again and again until it biased every sensory trait still in tact.

On all fours, my back arched, the glow of my eyes reflecting back in the shine of the floors which shook with me in pitch darkness.

"We can't take him to the bayou, it's too late. Bring the boy. Celeste should be along shortly," I heard someone think quickly.

They took my arms, dragging my weight briskly as they could. Without the time to let go, one of them kicked the plaster door inward.

 _Where's Rebekah? Who's smell is that? This isn't Mikael, it isn't Esther... Who is doing this to us?_ The wolf inside me would not stop complaining, moaning, scolding me for letting him go on so long without a meal.

"Chain him," the dark shapely figure to my left commanded.

Needles. In my aching back and broken arms. The smell of broken cartilage and blood ever so crisp I swore it were in my mouth.

The second witch quickly shuffled for the heavy boat chains in the dark of our cobwebbed hoard of possessions, her breathing as stressed as mine.

My limbs had twisted forwards and backwards in ugly protest of the human form.

There was a new sensation clamping down the and wedging the chains into position. In a frenzy, she stretched my broken arms up and had the chain draped over the overhead joint.

I could hear myself speak, knowing only a growl would come out. I felt like a man eaten whole, cramped and permanently locked in place, trying not to hurt the animal I sunk into. The one thing that couldn't fail me was my sight.

As the wolf's back claws scraped the dirty ground of the underdeveloped cellar, my eyes adjusted to the pitch black I'd been staring into. Above me, I heeded to the toss of heavy weight meet the middle of the air and land with a drastic thud. The smell of the bait was unmistakeable, the groan even sharper.

"Kol," I heard my inhuman howl. "Can you hear me, brother? Kol!"

The wolf's muzzle shut before my sentence had even finished. I was just sharp noise, not a man.

My cracking vertebrae twitched my head to the right.

The wolf lunged without getting anywhere. I found true punishment in myself being watched, wallowing in the trap set for my beast and meant to tie me to one place.

I heard the cellar door shut and watch the three vanish; the industrial chains weakening under my strain of a pull.

As the wolf and I battled our chains, I listened for the numbers of footsteps that were awaiting me upstairs. Instead, I was the unexpected guest to a conversation happening directly above me.

"And the others?" I heard Celeste sigh.

"They took quite the advantage of the witch's former tunnels. We've trapped the Destroyer and his children in the garden below the Devereaux's abattoir," an anonymous voice spoke. "Shall we just kill them?"

"We'll make a decision once this is over. I shall not make the mistake of distracting myself. In a matter of minutes, I'll be your leader, and Carmila will finally know fear," Celeste demanded.

The back feet had burst through the worn chains quickly.

"No!" someone screamed.

As it sounded, things were quickly falling apart. A distant female's scream confirmed it.

All feet on the staircase, bursting through the cellar door. The women didn't startle easy to this, addressing me with cautious movement. It was far too late. Celeste's shoulder dripped with fresh, hot blood as she clutched it with one hand and the head of black ram in the other. Her face was still stained red from its ill-shaven insides.

 **JEZEBEL**

I'd killed everyone. It was on the tip of my tongue and freshly registered. I had lost control. It was what I had been afraid of but never something I thought I would do at my own behest. For the first time in years, I'd started to wonder if everything I'd done or would do from this point was my own fault.

I blinked and found myself on the floor of Kol's former dungeon, bound by ropes and transformed into a star, waiting to be burned out.

Celeste knelt beside me pushing her fingertips into my forehead and the skin between my breasts forcefully. When she came near my mouth, I attempted to bite.

Quick to pull away she declared, "Always so resistant. You asked for this, mind you. You want to sabotage your own, you pay the price. Your freedom is over."

"What are you doing to me?" I hoarsely questioned.

"Collecting your spirit. The venom will slowly seep down into your skin...into the bloodstream and brain...quietly remove your living tether. Your spirit will then be prepared to move to a vessel where I control your presence. A simple precaution until we are ready to feed you to the hybrid," Celeste explicated with grace.

My head hit the ground with a light thud as I stopped fighting her.

"Since I have no other choice, I will trap you into the inevitable. You have nothing left to hide. _Why_ did I leave the Cuerpo? Why did you kill my father if he was no match for you?" I demanded.

"...You didn't. You were removed," she told me at last. "An attempt on your life put you far from life and only three feet close to death. This is a blessing, if not only a bird's song better than what you endured before. Your father was gone, your half-brothers eliminated, your soul misplaced. They would have buried you in a life you would never be able to escape."

"Who?" I asked hoarsely.

"Who else?" My reflection asked me.

Turning my head to look her direction, her only hint was a bewildering stare.

On sparkling bronze knees she knelt, the pendant swinging between her near-exposed chest close enough to graze my face.

She whispered, "You know exactly who fucked you over, _hija_. One step at a time. In this case...don't shoot the messenger. Sometimes, the universe does it for you."

Celeste raced her arms above me, in mid air retrieving the a red wax candle shaped like a bull's silhouette.

Her dead Latin chanting became deafening, even sore and multitoned, as if someone was speaking over her. A low hiss in my ear made me jump, the sharp rope around my arms and neck pulling from my motion.

My familiar swam up alongside my face, its body beefy and longere than before, as if it'd been collecting rats night and day to compensate for my demand to power. There was a second in time where I could see the red and white of its eyes and mouth just before it swam down my open throat without warning.

I did not see black or white or any mediator between Death's scythe and an angel's wing. It was gold and orange like I was swimming in the sun. My hair and arms were wet, bubbles of air sweeping out from my lip corners.

Above me there was a shadow, pale and matte like a portrait. She was swimming, too. The closer I came, the simpler it became to see her blurry face. If not the same, it was exactly like mine.

Her perfect nails and pyramid fingers outstretched for the outlier lock of hair that reached back as I pulled away.

My back hit something big and hard like a wall. When I swam around to face it, I discovered a colossal ceibo tree gripping one end of my skirt. Hiding in its submerged branches, highlighted by the cast of sunlight above this infinite abyss, were the remains of father and brothers.

The longer it took for me to take in what I was seeing, the easier it began to feel like I was trapped. I felt my throat ripple with an agonized scream as I wished for the nightmare to be over with.

 **CELESTE**

I set the bull candle down on the bloody granite floors of the Mikaelson mansion, the entire room's crownings completely covered by the bodies we had to push aside. Kol lie in a pentagram like position, arms tacked to the floor by white oak restraints. His eyes were open, mouth gaping with impaired noises.

"And the others?" I sighed to Devra.

"They took quite the advantage of the witch's former tunnels. We've trapped the Destroyer and his children in the garden below the Devereaux's abattoir," she informed me. "Shall we just kill them?"

"We'll make a decision once this is over. I shall not make the mistake of distracting myself. In a matter of minutes, I'll be your leader, and Carmila will finally know fear," I demanded.

I watched her accessorize herself with the head of her horse before she went to help bring Jezebel's body to the ritual. Slowly I began to lie myself down next to the head of the burning crimson candle until a dark and came and hushed it by the simple placement of his stabbed hand on top of the flame.

"No!" I cried.

A heavy gust of window broke in the windows and flooded the room with premature sunlight during the dark night. Kol, deprived of his sunlight ring, burst ablaze upon the sun's touch, coming in contact with the flammable blood floors and spreading chaos.

Jezebel's distant scream signaled that she had been returned to her body. I watched as the ballroom began to burn around me. And the crumbling of architecture sounded with a nearby howl of grief and anger.

"...She set the hybrid free. Celeste, what do we—"

Devra arms flew form her sides as the large Mikaelson wolf ate her in a moment's time. Jezebel hobbled out into the burning light of midnight, confused and watching me on the verge of my death.

I did not bother to look at the incoming assailant as I glared up at her.

"Don't look so worried. We aren't finished here," I threatened.

Klaus's monstrous jaw clamped down on my neck, paralyzing me and numbing me from head to toe, before I was completely destroyed.

 **JEZEBEL**

I watched Klaus's wolf form hobble out into the sunlight. I followed, watching the sun die within minutes of being reborn. He was exhaling in tormented howls and snarls, trying to make it to the cold touch of the storm's dampened grassland behind his burning property.

I prayed he wouldn't look back on it like I did. I was nauseous and distraught. What part of this ending was right? And how could I still feel like it was all because of me?

The guilt was overwhelming to the point where I chose to sit down and wait to collect myself again. Celeste and her Knot were gone. But so was Kol. There was no true resolve and I was still dealing with the crisis at hand!

Maybe I could not do anything to bring back Klaus's night, but I could get him out in time.

I stared at the sky long enough to see it turn purple in the early hours; it felt like seconds.

The next time I glanced at Klaus, he was a man, sitting on the hillside four feet away, in complete shock. It was somewhat different to see him so quiet and still, given the way I'd been looking at him the last few days.

"You didn't leave," I thought I heard him say.

I took off the overcoat of my dress, leaving myself less immune to the cold my bodice and underskirt. I put it over his shoulder, tapping the back of his head like I would tap my brother's if he hadn't paid attention to me.

"We're going," I declared quietly.

When I turned back to see if he was following, he was plainly staring as if I had made a terrible suggestion.

"Do you want to stay and get blamed for this? Or for your father to come back? I don't," I warned him.

I witnessed him sorely get to his feet and follow me with the fabric around him.

 **KLAUS**

She was quickly to find a set of Elijah's trousers in one of Celeste's cabinets in the house, and she took the time to get a coat for herself to take me to where my siblings would be.

Her nose and eyes were rosy with probable illness, but the silence and sullen look on her face said it was the last thing on her mind.

Rebekah woke in a heavier frenzy than Elijah, my arms wrapping around her to help her out of the caged coffin Celeste's coven had entrapped her in. My eyes frantically marched back and forth to Mikael, who hung unconscious from the corner of the room.

"Nik," Rebekah panicked tiredly.

Jezebel held the match that allowed us to see each other's faces, keeping an eye on the other two unconscious family members of mine.

"It's alright. We are going to take Elijah and we are going to escape," I promised roughly.

Elijah's back hit the stone wall from a sharp and shaking inhale as the last of the dagger's effects wore off.

"But, but Kol—and Emil. We can't leave them," Rebekah panted.

Elijah's eyes flew straight to where Mikael hung in a trance.

"Celeste," his first breath was.

"The cemetery has collapsed, our home is gone. The witches will blame us for last night. We need to get out of here, there is no time. get up!" I demanded of him, evading the painful truth.

"There's a tunnel. Celeste showed it to me, where— Where is she?" Elijah questioned dizzily.

A sharp pain in my throat made swallowing difficult. It was not fear, nor grief. It was anger.

"...Gone. As is Kol," painfully I admitted.

I'd break her betrayal to Elijah once I permitted him to grieve.

His eyes fell to the floor, eyebrows cocked with acting disbelief and denial.

"You need to hurry. It's better your gone before everyone notices the fire," Jezebel mumbled.

Elijah faced her rapidly and earned an anxious look from Jezebel.

"And where were you while this happened? Waiting in the shallows for her to die!" Elijah bellowed at her.

"I doubt whatever you say to her will bring Celeste back. there are things you don't know and that we need to explain. Jezebel. Go ahead of us," I instructed.

"I'm not leaving." she responded.

Rebekah frowned "What?"

Befuddled, I started, "After all of that, being Celeste's aid, you're going to–"

Jezebel interposed, "If Mikael awakes, who's going to keep him from going after you?"

"Why would that concern you?" Elijah scoffed.

She was unafraid to bark back, "I have reason to believe Kol was once my friend, though my memory is no longer reliable. And I owe him. But the choice is yours. Go, or stay and be destroyed."

Rebekah was not going to question Jezebel's reasoning, though Elijah was ready to call her bluff. Where his sudden rage with Jezebel came from was beyond me, but diplomatic enough, he was able to walk away with Rebekah towards the place she believed the tunnel out of the Quarter to be.

The match in Jezebel's hand died slowly, highlighting the harsh hues of bloodshed and trauma spreckled across her jaw.

"...I suppose I'll be indebted to you," I suggested.

The wooden match finally burned down and she dropped it to the dirt floor of the underground garden. Still in the cracks of light in the renovated abattoir's foundation, I could see that green eye of hers that was brushed with a sliver of brown, blinking softly.

"You don't have anything to offer me. If I can...I'll find answers. For all of it. Just go," she urged.

I felt her put the matchbox in my hand, the stir coming from the niche of the large cell forcing us to act on silence so as not to excite my waking father.

She pushes my hands away in the direction of my siblings just as Mikael started to growl at the darkness.

"Celeste!" was the last thing I heard before I found my anxious siblings, preparing their goodbye to our home for the infinite time.

 **CELESTE**

 _December 28, 1821_

Dearest Emil,

I've been worried sick. Nik is prepared to return New Orleans to its former glory as soon as we return from voyage. Elijah is far from adjusting to the loss of his Celeste, and in fact, I fear he may be completely indifferent from us forever. We no longer know where he has gone or why. Has he returned? Have you seen him, perhaps, come to grieve his beloved?

I can't wait to see you. Please wait a little longer.

Yours, R. Mikaelson

"Are you alright?" Jezebel intoned calmly, setting my drink down on his study table.

"Oh, yes, quite. I apologize, I do not mean to ignore you," in Emil's jovial fashion, I imitated.

Setting the letter down, I rewarded her with a sort gratitude.

Bashfully, the oblivious girl asked me, "Is there anything else you need from me before I go home?"

"Yes, please, will you just collect my father's canines, they've been out in the stables for a while. I'm sure they'd like to come in and eat," I requested.

She nodded her head politely, calmly going to find the Lord Devereaux's hunting dogs.

As I stood from my chair, I let the smile flee my face and return to composure. My eyes landed on the red bull above the fireplace, its wick black from a phantom flame.

"Have a splendid night, Jezebel," I called out.


End file.
